


Death Takes A Holiday: A Chill Beyond Russian Winters

by LyraNgalia, rude_not_ginger



Series: Death Takes A Holiday [12]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Bathroom Sex, Begging, Betrayal, D/s, Deductions, Denial of Feelings, Dirty Talk, Discussion of Abortion, Domestic Kink, Dominance, Dominatrix, Emotional Constipation, Exhibitionism, F/M, Gen, Great Hiatus, Gun Violence, Morning After, Morning Sex, Multiple Orgasms, Oral Sex, Orgasm Control, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Pillow Talk, Post-Reichenbach, Pregnancy, Public Display of Affection, Saint Petersburg, Self-Denial, Sensuality, Service Submission, Shower Sex, Simultaneous Orgasm, Submission, Threats, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vaginal Fingering, Wall Sex, resolved emotional tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-11 02:15:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 59,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5610064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyraNgalia/pseuds/LyraNgalia, https://archiveofourown.org/users/rude_not_ginger/pseuds/rude_not_ginger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saint Petersburg, Russia is the last stop before Moscow, and it has been made abundantly clear to Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes that they must part in Moscow, that their holiday must come to an end before they tire of each other. But will the promise of a bout of misbehaviour for Miss Adler, a return to the dominatrix before she ascends to Moriarty's throne, be enough? Or will misbehaviour become misadventure? Will Sherlock Holmes be able to keep his word, to remind himself that sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Collared

**Author's Note:**

> Please see [_Death Takes A Holiday: In the Shadow of the Black Mountain_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/694742) for notes/explanations on the peculiarities of this fic's writing style.

The rest of the ferry ride was uneventful. The body was retrieved, and the ferry's officers, utterly ill-prepared for the reality of finding said body, took to the planted note and the recovered candlestick exactly as predicted. The hours' delay was made up for by the fact that no one even glanced twice at Irene and Sherlock, never once suspecting them of having anything to do with the dead woman.  
  
And even with the delay, there had even been time upon arriving in St. Petersburg to freshen up before her appointment.  
  
The hot water of a well-provisioned hotel shower did more for Irene's mind than any tonic or rest. She methodically sluiced away the makeup, the disguises, the marks of her concussion and the attacks (both on her by the couple and on the dead woman), and stepped out of the shower in a cloud of warm, fragrant steam, her hair wet and curling down her bare back.  
  
She glanced at herself for merely a moment in the bathroom mirror, knowing what she would see, pale skin, fading bruises, a collection of scars, new and old. She did not need to look to know it was all there, and simply wrapped a towel around her torso and another around her hair, before walking back into the cool hotel room, its plush carpet soft beneath her feet, a pair of leather pants and a sleek black corset laid out on the bed.  
  
"You'll have to lace me up," she says without preamble, without even looking to see if he was paying attention. He would be, by now.

 

During her shower, he had left. A brief journey, down the stairs and to a shop he'd seen not far away. By the time she stepped out, he had what he'd purchased in his pocket, and he was sitting in the chair by the bed, reading over the papers.  
  
Her skin is flushed as she steps out of the shower, and her hair is in those loose ringlets that are oddly attractive. He can't help but pay attention to her as she moves across the room. She pulls him in like a satellite.  
  
"Of course," he responds. "Though I'm far more used to lacing myself in those sort of things."

 

She shakes out the towel that had held her hair off her neck, and rubbed it through the length of it, wicking away stray drops of moisture before tossing the towel carelessly to the ground. Irene sheds the towel around her body as well, letting it join its mate, and turns to give him a speculative look over her shoulder, her lips twisting into a smirk.  
  
"The same case with the millionaire that taught you how to properly hook my garters, I expect."

 

He doesn't need to break his gaze from her hair to know what he'll see when her towel falls. Her body has become something he knows, even the new scars and bruises.  
  
"It was."  
  
He stands, stepping over to her, but not in her way, so he can watch her dress.

 

He stands close enough that she can feel his physical presence in the faint radiant warmth, in the change in air currents, in the soot scent of the city clinging to him, the faint but obvious smell of tar and car exhaust making her nose itch uncharacteristically.  
  
She slips on her undergarments with practiced fingers. Black lace pulled over her hips, the pattern stark but soft and familiar over her skin, a thin tube top to protect her skin from the boning in the corset. She shakes out the leather trousers and gives him a look over her shoulder, her damp hair leaving small droplets behind on her neck. "You went out," she says conversationally, as if remarking on the weather.  
  
"Down the road, past the taxi driver smoking clove cigarettes, if I'm not mistaken."

 

He raises his eyebrows.  
  
"I wasn't aware your nose was so sharp," he replies. He doesn't directly answer, of course. It would ruin the surprise.

 

Her sense of smell isn't quite as sharply honed as his, not usually, but the soot in the car's exhaust is obvious. As is the spicy itch of cloves. "The cab is in worse shape than most," she answers. He doesn't confirm it, but then he wouldn't need to. She knows she is right, and his non-answer all but proved it.  
  
The smell of tanned leather chases away some of the lingering scent of the street, and Irene steps into the supple trousers with ease, carefully balancing on her bare feet as she tugs them up. They emphasize her every curve, but conceal all skin from view with black leather.  
  
"Hand me the corset," she says, peremptory, expectant, as she reached out a hand.

 

He looks down at her hand, and he knows she expects his submission in this. It would be an easy thing to submit to, to simply hand it to her, but he doesn't want to be that--- _obvious_ , not really. He picks up the corset and holds it out to her, not placing it in her hand.  
  
"I can't smell it."

 

His senses are sharper, she knows it; a simple matter of practice and honing a skill rather than any natural talent, so the idea that she has found some clue he had not draws her brows together, the barest frown tugging her mouth downward before an explanation comes to mind. "Must be the cigarettes," she answers archly. "Dulls the sense of smell, don't they?"  
  
When the weight of the corset does not land in her hand as expected, Irene turns fully to him to study him. She crosses her arms beneath her breasts, the motion tugging the thin tube top that protected her skin down just enough reveal the edge of an areola, pink against pale skin. "Afraid you'll betray you don't actually know which side of the corset is up if you hand it to me, despite your claims of knowing better?"

 

Despite himself, he finds a smile creeping on his face.  
  
"Threatening my training and knowledge in order to make certain I hand you something submissively," he says. "You're very good."  
  
He turns the corset over, handing it to her lace side up.

 

"So certain you want to call what you're doing being submissive? You're obviously enjoying yourself." Her own pleased smirk is admission enough that she is as well.  
  
She takes the corset from his hand and wraps the heavy article of clothing around her torso, leaving it loose as she begins doing up the front of the busk, one eyelet at a time.

 

"I imagine you can smell my enjoyment, too," he says, voice deadpan, but intention teasing.  
  
He steps behind her, taking hold of the laces, but not pulling yet.  
  
"How tight?"

 

He steps close behind her, warm and solid, and Irene gathers her hair, pulling it over her shoulder lest it get caught in the laces, baring an expanse of naked neck and shoulder as she does so.  
  
"That I don't need scent to tell me," she answers in kind. "I know where to look."  
  
She rests a hand against her hip, drawing her hand along the silky fabric of the corset. "Enough to intimidate without being distracting." There is laughter in her voice as she adds, "Try your worst, Mr. Holmes. I'll tell you if I've had enough."

 

"Considering the amount of areola you are showing, I believe distraction is inevitable," he replies. This implies, he realizes, that he is also distracted. He must alleviate that thought immediately.  
  
He gives a pull on the laces at the center, tight and taut, and then lifts a finger up to tug at the top binding, then the second, tightening slowly downwards, before working up. He doesn't do a dramatic, sharp pull, just slow and constant.  
  
"Have we decided on my role in all this?"

 

The fact that he notices proves his distraction, and Irene laughs, pleased, as she adjusts the top, to ensure nothing is showing again. That laughter slides into a low purr of approval at the firm, slow way he works the corset laces tight. She feels more like herself, more like Irene Adler, the Woman, the dominatrix, with the familiar embrace of steel against her torso, straightening her back even further than her usual poise.  
  
"You can be my valet. Bring in my things, look properly deferential as you carry for me and wait for me in the front room." She inhales slowly, deeply, feeling her lungs expand within the steel corset, and exhales in a sigh of pleasure. "But if you'd rather, you can play chauffeur, stay with the car, some who knows how many floors down from the hotel suite?"

 

He gives the laces a sharp tug to show his displeasure before starting the first knot.  
  
"There must be some option better than valet---" _That would keep me nearby_ , he nearly says. She is more than capable on her own, and he knows this. He not only knows this, his mind reminds him, but he must be prepared for it, because in only one more stop and all he will know is that she is away, surviving on her own. And he will have to remain in London. He will stay away, and she will survive. He has become too dependent on the knowledge that she is near him and alive.  
  
"I'll remain chauffeur," he says, voice suddenly stiffer, colder.

 

She gasps at the sharp tug of the laces, the steel bones squeezing her rib cage unexpectedly tightly as he begins knotting the laces, his voice suddenly colder in three simple words.  
  
Some thought has turned in the prodigious labyrinth of his mind, and while she made it a point to tell him repeatedly what she knew he liked, there were still parts of Sherlock Holmes' mind that Irene Adler had yet to penetrate. It was, after all, part of what made him so interesting, the knowledge that there would be another puzzle to unravel, that he was nowhere near as easy to read as everyone else in the world.  
  
"Suit yourself." Her words mirror his, cold, purposeful, though just a touch breathless from the corset. She reaches back without looking to tug the top laces looser.

 

He relaxes his grip on the laces, allowing her to loosen the top, just slightly. It does give a better hourglass look, and is no doubt more comfortable. Still, he can't quite shake his displeasure at the whole situation. His irritation at the way the Woman makes him feel, and, more importantly, how she won't be around to make him feel it very soon.  
  
He knots the corset, and steps up behind her, reaching over to her neck.  
  
"The scarf did some damage," he says, brushing his fingertips against her throat.

 

His fingertips are warm against her throat; the air conditioning in the room has wicked the moisture and heat from her skin, and Irene wishes her instinct is not to lean into his hand that her pulse doesn't seem to race at the now-familiar touch.  
  
She doesn't need him, she reminds herself. They will part soon enough and she refuses to _miss_ him.  
  
"Superficial damage," she dismisses, the touch of his fingers against her throat making the hum of her words vibrate against her skin. "I can hide it with cosmetics."

 

He slips the package he purchased from his pocket, and moves it up, around her neck. It is a pearl choker, with three rows of pearls. Black on the top, silver pearls in the center, and black on the bottom, with a few red teardrop gems on the bottom. It is just long and wide enough to cover the marks on her neck, but still accentuates the shape of her neck and jawline.  
  
He hated buying the necklace. He hated it, because it made him think of the Woman, and he had no reason to purchase it for her apart from the fact that it made him think of her. Even the marks on her neck are not really bad enough to warrant and addition of costume, but---he still purchased it.  
  
"I wrote a bit about the psychology matching makeup to jewelry," he says.

 

The cool, heavy touch of pearls against her throat surprises Irene. The marks on her throat are hardly enough to require a disguise, and any disguise she would have expected to determine on her own. No, there is something to the pearls around her neck that is more than a disguise.  
  
She reaches up, feels the smoothness of three separate rows of pearls, the faceted edge of small, teardrop shaped stones. She does not remind him that she could have hidden the marks of her own fingernails with foundation, does not protest that this is unlike her. Instead she turns to him, never breaking out of the cocoon of tension they have found themselves in again, and flicks the small red gem at the hollow of her throat.  
  
"And what do pearls say about their wearers, Mr. Holmes?" she asks, her voice low and husky. She arches an eyebrow as she adds, "I'm glad you didn't chose white."

 

"It wouldn't have suited," he says, simply. She's close to him, and he leans in, just closely enough for his nose to brush hers. "Far less of a risk for removal than makeup."  
  
His heart rate is elevated, he finds the image of her, standing as the dominatrix next to him, surprisingly very arousing. She has played dominatrix, but never really dressed the part for him. An interesting sensation, really.

 

She finds her eyes drawn to his mouth, watching his lips shape the simple words. He is a distraction, she reminds herself, an intoxicating distraction she cannot afford much longer, but she does not draw back, does not break out of the space he has moved into.  
  
Her eyes are dilated as she forces herself to look up into his eyes, as her heartbeat races beneath her skin. "I expect you've considered the implication of style," she tells him, her words low and intimate. "Are you suggesting you've collared me?"

 

He raises his hand up, fingertip just touching one of the red teardrop gems.  
  
"I think anyone who implies that they could is desperately out of their depths."  
  
She had physically collared him once, and he was finding that the straps she had tightened around his mind were far harder to break than any cuff.  
  
"Though I can understand why you might think that. Your former profession, and all."

 

She has to laugh, at that, and the laugh almost hides the way her breath hitches as his fingertip touches the red gem, a drop of blood against her throat.  
  
"Ah, but you're hardly _any_ one, Mr. Sherlock Holmes," she reminds him, amusement quirking her lips upward as she rests a finger at his throat, at the precise same spot as the gem rests on hers. She would never admit it out loud, but he has tangled himself in her more inextricably than any knot, than any collar that can be laid against her throat. He's tied himself to her in bonds of the mind, in thought, that she doubts she'll be able to ever explain.  
  
She smirks, and it is as much at her own weaknesses as at her words, or at his gift. "You say former profession as if I've left it behind."

 

"You used to play the game," he says. "Now, you run it."  
  
He wants her. But there isn't time for it, and he knows that. It doesn't make the want any less valid. Just...less accessible for fulfillment. But she could be late. All he'd have to do is lean forward, press his mouth against the gem on her throat---  
  
And this is the last stop they have. He won't indulge, it will only make things hurt more later. Sentiment, caring, it's not an advantage.  
  
He moves back, taking his hand from her throat.

 

He steps back, and the tension that had been simmering breaks with an almost physical snap. It is unexpected, and Irene blinks twice before she draws another breath, this time filling her lungs with the cool, flat air of the hotel air conditioning system rather than the warmth between them with the bite of cloves and car exhaust and soap.  
  
She refuses to admit that she wants him, that she would prefer playing the game with him, with the dominatrix's armour, than with the politician in St. Petersburg who pays heavily for the pleasure of being humiliated.  
  
"Indeed," she says sharply, stepping back. She dips into her bag and pulls out a pair of stiletto heels. Not the Louboutins she favoured, there had not been time for that, but sharp black heels all the same, far higher than anything she'd worn since the injury she'd taken in San Salvador.  
  
She puts the shoe on her uninjured side first, refusing to touch the bed or anything else for balance. "And the game's waiting."

 

His heart refuses to stop racing, particularly seeing her with the heels. There is something distinctly powerful about those, something that reminds him specifically of the Woman. Perhaps because it was the only sort of clothing she wore when he first met her, but he doubts it. It's the precariousness of them, the height. That's very her.  
  
He looks back up to her, and steadies his face. There is no need for jealousy. All the same, he would much rather be indulging than waiting down in the car, refusing to feel.  
  
"Yes." He buttons up his shirt to the highest button and slips a tie over his shoulders. His own armor.

 

The stiletto heels are perhaps her best reminder of what it means to be Irene Adler, to be the Woman and all that it entailed. They are power and danger and confidence and untouchability, and Irene wraps all of that around herself as she stops at the mirror, lines her mouth with blood red lipstick. Her still-healing leg trembles ever so slightly in the heel, but it is momentary. She knows her strength will hold. She refuses to let it be otherwise.  
  
The pearl choker around her throat gleams, the three gems glinting like drops of blood. It suits her, and a little thrill of pleasure curls its way up Irene's spine at the thought. She tamps it down, however, because the warm simmering tension had been shattered, that the game was what was to be played now, and not their own indulgences.  
  
She refuses to acknowledge that she'll miss this.  
  
She sets the lipstick back on the vanity and turns to him, watching as he slips on the tie, buttons his shirt to the button he hates. "After you, Mr. Holmes," she says coolly.

 

He ties a quick half Windsor, and starts for the door.  
  
"Of course, Miss Adler," he says. He is in his own disguise, a man who would see her only by her last name. Not by who she is to him. The Woman.  
  
"Where am I driving us tonight?"

 

They are wearing their disguises again. She reminds herself that they are a necessity, that they cannot be Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler if he is to play chauffeur. But his crisp coolness chafes, unexpected against the previous pleasant tension that had caught them.  
  
And it irritates her that his dismissive coldness should affect her at all. She forces that irritation away, forces herself back to the dominatrix's hauteur.  
  
"You're taking _me_ to the Hotel Astoria," she retorts, bending down to pick up her bag. The subtle stress to remind him that this is her game, not his, not _theirs_. "My client should be becoming properly anxious."

 

"Am I?" he retorts. He wants to argue, because that is something they do. He wants to argue, because of course he's taking her, but he's also taking himself, and she's saying this to simply dismiss him. It's working, and that's annoying and---  
  
He clenches his teeth. Yes, he is. If he argues with her, they will not leave this hotel room. In that way, their personalities and companionship has become, well, predictable.  
  
He opens the door and steps through it, heading down to the car he procured for this venture.

 

He clenches his jaw, and vicious satisfaction shoots down Irene's spine. She _wants_ to irritate him, to prove to either him or herself or both of them that they are neither as untouchable as they would like to be, that she is under his skin no matter how often they both pretend otherwise.  
  
It is petty and childish and she doesn't particularly care that it is, she is simply pleased it _works._  
  
And so she follows, closing the door to the hotel room behind her with perhaps a firmer slam than necessary, her heels clicking sharply against the polished wood floor.  
  
"The appointment is for an hour," she says as they enter the elevator. She may well be going over her schedule out loud, for all the care she is pointedly not offering him. "Eight minutes from the door of the hotel to the room itself. Two minutes to speak to his handler. Another eight from the room back to the door."

 

"I suppose I'll just wait by the car the entire time, shall I?" he says in an equally disinterested tone.  
  
Of course he'll wait by the car. In case they need to get away. For all that his mind is insisting he doesn't care, he has no intention of going anywhere. He glances briefly down at her legs. She stands confidently in her heels now, but how long ago was San Salvador? How long has she been in flats because of this holiday?  
  
Regret is not something he believed he could feel, but it bubbles up inside of him. Annoyingly. Strongly.

 

"Do as you please." She taps her nails idly against the rail as the elevator doors close and they begin to descend. The rail allows her to lean back on her hands, to take some of the weight off her still-healing leg. Not that she'd tell him that.  
  
She is fine. Back to herself in every sense of the word.  
  
"I doubt there are shops for you to frequent in the area."

 

He notices the lean. It could be due to pain. It could also be an act of extreme nonchalance. Either is likely, and he refuses to dwell on the possibility of the first. The Woman isn't going to push herself---is she?  
  
"I've attended the only one I was interested in," he replies.  
  
The lift dings, and the door opens. "Don't forget your lipstick." He steps out, leading the way to the car.

 

Her mouth twitches in irritation as she follows him out. She has spent too much time following Sherlock Holmes in the last few months, she decides. Never mind that he follows her as often, never mind that he is, even in this case, following her lead.  
  
It will be, she reminds herself, far better when they part. She will be able to do as she pleases, without the needs of a certain consulting detective at the back of her mind. He will be back in London, among all the eloquent dust and idiotic serviettes John Watson's delayed wedding will need.  
  
"Be careful, Mr. Holmes," she says tartly as she approaches the waiting vehicle, sweeping her eyes over it with a careful, studied nonchalance. "I might have thought you'd meant something by the shop that had caught your interest."

 

The statement throws him so completely at first. Caught his interest. Jewelry. He turns to look at her, confusion plain on his face.  
  
"Why invite something neither of us want into the equation?" he asks.

 

Her lip curls into a smile, and she shifts the gold and amethyst ring that has been far too comfortable on the fourth finger of her left hand to the same finger on her right. Her politician client will see it there and immediately consider how much pain it would bring if she backhanded him with it.  
  
Unfortunately, all Irene can think of is how annoyed she would be if she'd had to clean that idiot's blood from between the diamonds.  
  
"I'm only stating what's already there," she retorts. "Or wasn't it obvious?"

 

Obvious? Yes, perhaps it is obvious. She has always worn the ring, in the same way that he realizes he still has on the wedding band from all of those disguises ago. He'll take it off when they part, and refuse to think about it again. Back to the life of the perpetual bachelor. But perhaps there was one time, one single holiday, where the idea did not seem as idiotic as it might have.  
  
He opens the driver's door and steps inside, refusing to think about it.  
  
The car is a black sedan style. Expensive. Rented under a stolen credit card. They had around 48 hours with the car in this city before it became something to worry about.

 

He remains silent, childish even, the way he pointedly moves to the driver's side door rather than opening the passenger door for her, as his disguise would have dictated.  
  
Irene opens the door herself, keeps herself occupied with the logistics of the politician. He liked pain more than humiliation, but the necessities of his office dictated nothing could show above the neck. Which made the ring an even more tempting fantasy for him, the one pain he could not have.  
  
She slides into the back of the car, the leather interior soft and supple against her skin. Her lips curl into an approving smile at that, as she tucks herself into the spacious back seat and shuts the door behind herself. She takes a pair of hairpins out of her bag, and begins twisting her mostly dry hair into a tight updo.  
  
"The agreement is that he will have no security personnel within the hotel itself," she says. "Not that he would want them there. Too easy to incriminate himself, if any of them were disloyal. Which means any potential turncoats will be loitering outside."

 

"Or press," Sherlock replies. No, he reminds himself. They are _not_ having a conversation.  
  
He turns the car on and resolves to drive over as many bumps in the pavement as possible.

 

The Russian roads are pocked with potholes and missing cobblestones. It was, perhaps, a matter of Russian pride, that they would rather build stoic character through irritation than pave their roads. As the car bumped along, its expensive suspension no match for St. Petersburg's infrastructure, Irene considered backhanding the Russian politician simply for the fact that he had not improved the roads.  
  
"Yes, photographers itching for a story," she muses. She hides a wince when she jabs herself on the scalp with a pin during a bump. "But that's hardly of a concern now. No damage to be done to the no-longer-dead."

 

"For you, yes," Sherlock replies. "One of us is remaining dead for some time before returning to our---"  
  
He glances at her in the rear view mirror. "---Previous lives."  
  
Not that he's particularly worried. He's almost certain he could stand next to John Watson and not be noticed, the moment he was in character.

 

The pin finally finds its mark, and the weight of her hair, heavy against the back of her head, is a comfort to Irene. Another piece of Irene Adler, back together. She should feel better, more like herself.  
  
"As you were so insistent on pointing out a few minutes ago," she reminds him, "only one of us is going back to our previous lives."  
  
The game was to be hers, after all, while he returned to the consulting detective. No matter whether or not she ever returned to London, even temporarily.

 

"Yes," he agrees.  
  
And he would return. A little less naive, a little more acerbic, and with new scars, but he would return to his life. And John would accept him back, of course he would. The Woman, all of this, it would leave no lasting mark on their lives. A brief respite.  
  
Nothing would change.  
  
He turns, just a little sharply, down a side street towards the hotel.

 

It is hard to say whether Irene is more irritated by his pique or the fact that she can not be certain what caused it. But the cause does not change her annoyance, and Irene purses her lips, careful not to smudge her lipstick, and glares at him in the rear view mirror.  
  
"Do try not imploding in your _mood_ ," she snipes as the car approaches the hotel. She can see the glint of a telescopic lens from the building across the street as they approach.

 

Sherlock sees it as well. Camera or sniper? Size makes him think camera. Perhaps he's being too careless.  
  
"Rear entrance?" he offers. In character.

 

Her eyes dart from the glint in the window to the hotel's front entrance, and Irene taps out a quick text on her mobile. Her irritation gives way to sharp calculation, as she considers the photographer in question. Not a sniper. A sniper couldn't get this close to a politician. She had to give it to the Russians, that their particular brand of paranoia meant they recognized loyalties could be bought.  
  
"No, the front entrance will suit," she answers, slipping on Irene Adler's easy dismissal like a well-loved glove, her supreme confidence gliding off her tongue as she casually presents her profile to the window, her fingertips running along the polished interior of the car.  
  
"Someone is about to learn the lesson that he's playing with the big boys now."

 

He wants to argue, but he won't. He's playing a part, now. And the part requires that he does what she says.  
  
"One hour, eighteen minutes," he says, pulling up.

 

The car pulls up to the front entrance, slows to a stop, and for a moment she is tempted to suggest he play the valet again. But she brushes the temptation aside. To suggest it would be to acknowledge she wants him there, that she wants him close, and she will not indulge that desire. He can burn here in his pique for all she cared.  
  
"Such precision, one might almost think you were concerned," she says with a cool laugh as she opens the door, as she picks up her bag and extends one stilettoed foot out of the false security of the rental car.  
  
She steps out of the car and before shutting the door cannot resist the urge to offer a parting shot. "Do try not to collapse under the weight of your indifference."

 

He gives her a look. "Remember to deduce what your client likes, not your chauffeur's difference."  
  
Because if she was honestly trying, he knows she'd see the amount this actually bothers him. He lowers the window and pulls out a cigarette as he sets the car back into drive.  
  
"I'll be in the carpark."

 

At his retort, her expression shifts for a half second, long enough that she knows he will register it. The dominatrix's bored irritation falls to reveal to the Woman's fierce triumph before the mask comes on again.  
  
She knows this irritates him, but he is being idiotic and if he insists on wrapping himself in the consulting detective's cold detachment then she would make him bleed truth, would wring emotion from his detachment like blood, like the teardrops at her neck.  
  
She does not turn to watch him drive to the carpark. Refuses to acknowledge him at all as she turns her back on him and the car and the photographer with his telescopic lens. Pride and the dominatrix's armour keep her head held high as she waltzed into the hotel.  
  
Pride, the dominatrix's armour, and the need to be Irene Adler again, to be the Irene Adler who misbehaved and waltzed through the lives of politicians and left them in shambles, the Irene Adler who did not need the knowledge of bloody infuriating Sherlock Holmes in her life.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To our faithful readers, Lyra apologizes profusely for the delay in getting this installment begun in earnest. But with a new year comes a new promise, to return to regularly posted chapters, and to the finale of our little adventure.
> 
> And if anyone is interested in what Irene's necklace looks like, look [here](http://lyrangalia.tumblr.com/post/83881049010/from-death-takes-a-holiday-st-petersburg-she).


	2. An Inconvenient Detour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pride does, in fact, go before a fall, as the Woman's planned misbehaviour is cut short by an old injury. But is it the injury that will slow them down, or Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes' insistence that they do not care to be concerned?

Irene Adler waltzes into the Russian politician's hotel in leather and stiletto heels, and reemerges early, 57 minutes after she entered, her right hand hanging at her side, her heels in her left hand, and her expression twisted in some mixture of fury and pain.

 

It has been fifty-seven minutes, and Sherlock Holmes has listened to eight different radio stations, gotten out and paced around the car four times, and been through fifteen cigarettes, and had exactly one actual phone call during the time that the Woman has been gone. He assured the other person that yes, she would be there and no, of course he wasn't lying. This was far too important to Sherlock's cause.  
  
Now, if only the Woman would---  
  
He looks up from where he's been leaning against the car, an eyebrow up.  
  
"He didn't attack you?"

 

Her right hand throbs with dull, hot pain as she walks, and even a cursory brush against her side sends another throb up her nerves and into her brain. With every step, Irene curses her injured leg and its weakness. She does not regret her choice in footwear, but is merely livid at her body's own inability to bear up under it. She had misjudged her own recovery, her wounded leg giving way unexpectedly, causing her to fall from her heels, and in her attempt to break her own fall landed poorly on her right hand.  
  
The scene had ended then and there, with the politician's whimpering desire turned to disdain, to skepticism of whether she could actually cause him the pain and humiliation he so craved (and which he had hitherto so enjoyed), to calculation. She had gotten some information, but if she were to need more information from him at a later date, it would take far more breaking to remind him who was Mistress, to wipe the thought of the woman unable to stand in her own shoes from his memory.  
  
And how long were powerful men's memories when it came to women's humiliations.  
  
She is _furious_.  
  
So when Sherlock Holmes asks his patently idiotic (though understandable) question, she shoots him a look that is pure scathing anger, the force of it momentarily cutting through the throbbing pain.   
  
"Don't be idiotic," she snaps, careful to hold her right hand at an angle, cradled close to her body but not easily brushed by either herself or anything around her. "If he were capable of that much motivation, he'd hardly have had to buy his seat in government." She nods at the car and, knowing he will not let her in until she explained her premature arrival, she adds shortly, "I fell. Let me in."

 

She fell. A perfectly understandable result, considering her leg and the height of her heels. If he looks, now, he can see the impact point on her wrist, and the way her outfit is twisted, ever so slightly, to show a turn of body and a fall of force.  
  
His free hand relaxes, his nails having bitten half-moons into his palm in anticipation of the injury he was going to lay upon the politician she had been seeing.  
  
Possibly sprained, though it might be broken. Sherlock can set most breaks, but not a wrist.  
  
He tosses the cigarette aside and extends his hand. "May I see?"

 

He relaxes. She can see it in his stance, in the way the promise of violence leeches out of his hands when he realizes that the politician had not inflicted the injury she bears. She sees him relax and she knows it is some _protective instinct_ that he has grown into since their holiday began. Though, if she were thinking objectively, she would have to admit that said instinct had been long between them, had been there since he stormed a stolen yacht in Hong Kong and she'd nearly attacked him with little more than bits of sharpened wood.  
  
But she is furious and she wants nothing of his protection or his concern, because her anger is easier to feed than to admit she had been wrong, that she had misjudged her own recovery. "I'd rather you didn't," she says snippily, the ice she wanted in her words broken, cracked by the brittle tension with which she holds back the pain.   
  
When he doesn't open the door, she steps around him to the passenger side door, juggling the bag on her shoulder with the heels in her hand as she tries to open said door one-handed. "The door, if you don't mind."

 

He moves to the door, putting his hand on the handle but not moving it.  
  
"Your leg?" he asks. "The angle of your fall, it might have reopened old injuries---?"  
  
Caring is not an advantage. He can see she's capable enough, but, now, they have the opportunity to make certain. To get her as healthy as possible before she becomes the new spider at the center of the web. In this city, Mycroft can't catch them, can't stop them.

 

She does not want to have this conversation. She does not want his concern now, does not want to allow herself to _like_ his concern, and she certainly does not want to allow herself to be drawn in by his concern to have the moment break, to have him realize caring is not an advantage and wall himself away once he recognizes Moscow is on the horizon.  
  
She shoves the heels at his chest and lets go of them. Let him fumble with her shoes if he wishes, she is going to get into the car. She considers whether or not she can drive in her current state, curls her fingers experimentally, and is rewarded by pain shooting up her arm again at the motion, the feel of it too sudden to mask.  
  
More than just a sprained wrist then. At least one of her fingers is affected. She can't drive in this state.  
  
"My leg carried me down the hotel and into the carpark perfectly adequately," she informs him, her words clipped to hide the pain. "Don't play the solicitous chauffeur now, Mr. Holmes. The irritable consulting detective suits you far better."  
  
Still, she doesn't stalk away from him to the other side of the car.

 

Tightness in neck and jaw, followed by twitch of muscle to eyebrow. Repressed pain.  
  
"Hospital," he says, opening the door.

 

For a moment she is tempted to refuse. Never mind that he is doing precisely as she demands by opening the door to the car. Never mind that she knows she needs more medical attention either of them can provide. She knows it but she is tempted to refuse anyway, because she does not want to need help from bloody Sherlock Holmes.

" _Fine_."

With her uninjured hand, she all but throws her bag into the back seat. She almost throws herself in after the bag, but realizes the action would simply allow him more ammunition in calling her actions irrational or childish. So she simply draws a deep breath, and slides into the back seat with all the grace and cold detachment she can manage, all the while holding her right arm against her body.

 

Before the word comes out of her mouth, he considers the variation in probability that she will agree, and its relation to how much pain she is in. Considering the wait until she says _Fine_ is not long, and the fact that there is absolutely no protest, he deduces that she is in a not inconsiderable amount of pain. Broken wrist seems more likely, perhaps something with her leg, too, that she is keeping hidden.  
  
He moves quickly towards the door, and starts the car in the direction of the main road.  
  
"I saw a sign for a hospital three miles back," he says.

 

Settled into the back of the car, without the need to balance herself and her personal effects or to prevent her hand from brushing against anything else, Irene turns her attention back to her injury. She hurts, and her ability to move her fingers is compromised, but her wrist does not look obviously misaligned. She dismisses the idea that the bullet wound from San Salvador has opened up, partly because she can feel nothing but her customary soreness from it, partly because he suggested it.

With her left hand, she carefully runs probing fingers along her right wrist. "Too close," she objects, forcing herself to breathe slowly, uniformly, as her probing fingers find where the pain seems worse and follows it circumferentially around her wrist. The little finger on her right hand refuses to bend without pain.

"If the photographer in the building across the street is any good at all he will have contacts at that hospital." She reaches for her mobile, checks the internet, looking for options. "Head north," she says. "There is a clinic, about thirteen kilometers away. It's far away to be reasonably discreet."

 

He pushes foot to pedal, and the car speeds out of the carpark. He should be discreet, he should be very aware that there is nothing to panic about but---but he can't---and the last time they were in a hospital together, he left believing without a shadow of a doubt that she was dead.  
  
He hates that panic. He hates that he can't control it, or how he feels about her.  
  
He also hates that he wants to apologize.  
  
"A clinic can set a bone, but won't be able to repair muscle," he says. "Is that enough?"

 

She does not answer immediately, instead continuing to study her injury. Her wrist hurts, but it is a distinctly different pain than that in her little finger, and while she cannot move said little finger, her wrist manages motion. A sprain then, most likely, for the wrist. She compares left and right hands, and her right finger is clearly out of alignment. Slight, but noticeable. A sprained wrist and a dislocated finger then.

Irritating.

If I could set my own fingers, I'd consider that enough," she answers irritably. And if she were not too busy indulging in her own fit of pique, she'd admit that she'd had enough of hospitals for quite a long time.

 

He could set her fingers for her. He knows this. He could set her fingers, keep them both out of the hospital, and save a lot of time. But the idea of being close to her, of touching her when he has to stay away, it feels almost physically painful.  
  
His hands might shake. _Gauche._  
  
Clinic it is. He speeds, avoiding holes in the road he ignored before. Quick, but efficient.  
  
"Alias?"

 

The ride grows smoother, and Irene has no illusion that it is improvements in the road. He's weaving slightly, avoiding the potholes that pocked the streets. She almost wishes he isn't doing so, because it would be so much easier to be irritated at him if he were driving into them on purpose.  
  
"Ana," she answers without hesitation. "Anastasia Timoshenko." The legendary missing Romanoff princess. It suits her pride to take the name. But with a common enough last name that the clinic may hesitate to name it an alias. She touches her wrist again, winces, and lets her hand fall to her side. Further exploration was hardly going to solve her problem.   
  
"The chauffeur would be too obvious," she continues, looking at him in the rear-view mirror, seeing the tension in his face that he tries to hide. "And you're too tense to be a well-meaning passerby."

 

"Husband," he suggests. Perhaps that's too forward. But, then again, he's used to being her husband. It's odd, to become used to a title, or a position. He became used to being the consulting detective, and John's flatmate. And, over time, he became used to being the Woman's partner, lover. And the alias of 'husband' just came with that.  
  
He has the acerbic words, _unless you have a better suggestion_ on his lips, but he bites them down.  
  
"I'm not tense."

 

She will never tell him that 'husband' had been the first option that came to her mind.  
  
How long had it taken for them to slip into those roles? They have crossed the world, slipping on and discarding disguises as easily as breathing, the disguises of the recovering opera singer and the French journalist, the carefree American tourists carefree in their attraction on holiday, the businesswoman and her careless young fling. But at some point, it had become second nature to slip on roles as partners, as tempestuous murderous lovers, as carefully scripted political husband and wife. Each of those with distinct colourations that kept them from being obvious, kept them from being dull or boring.  
  
But always a matched pair.  
  
She shakes her head, as if the motion will shake away that stray, uncomfortable thought.   
  
"If you're to play the worried husband, you should be," she answers. The levity in her voice is forced, but the small smirk on her lips as she looks at him in the rear-view mirror, at least, is very much real, and very much herself.

 

He is irritated by how easily the adrenaline flows into his veins once he lets it. He becomes acutely aware of how tightly he is holding into the wheel. He turns another corner, and the clinic is up ahead.  
  
"I'll be Dmitri," he says. After a beat, he realizes where he acquired the name, and cringes. "One of Mrs. Hudson's cousins made John and I babysit, they had a movie, we were required to watch it."  
  
He stops and goes for the door.

 

The car stops, and Irene cannot help but sigh in relief at the promise of relief to come. "Not a movie I'm familiar with," she tells him with that same forced lightness as she steels herself to climb out of the car. "If you hadn't felt the need to defend the alias, I'd never have known."  
  
She hesitates for a moment, and slips on the heels again. Better than entering the clinic barefoot.

 

That's even more irritating. An idiotic childish alias defended, and she wouldn't have even known. Well, far better than looking like he watched and remembered the movie voluntarily.  
  
He steps over to her door as she slips on the heels.  
  
"I _can_ carry you," he offers, with the tense, worried but affectionate voice of Dmitri Timoshenko. Dmitri Timoshenko's tone is upsettingly very like Sherlock's own.

 

The boundaries between themselves and their aliases are blurring. _Have_ been blurring for a long time now, if Irene were to be perfectly honest and admit it to herself, which she is in absolutely no mood to do. It reminds her that Moscow cannot come soon enough, that they needed to part before they became any more enthralled and enmeshed in each other.  
  
"And I _can_ walk," she retorts, her own voice softer than it had been as she hears the genuine concern in his voice. She tells herself it is simply to prove to him that there is nothing wrong with her legs, with the healing injury. Still, she takes his arm with her left hand. She isn't leaning on him, precisely, but she does steady herself against him.  
  
Unlike the hospital, no worried nurse comes running out the door. For that, Irene is grateful.

 

He's secretly grateful that she insists on walking. It saves his shoulder undue stress, and it shows that she's capable of walking on her leg.  
  
The injury to her hand is probably minor, he tells himself as she steadies herself on his arm. She'll have her hand set and they'll return to business, he tells himself as he puts a hand to the small of her back to help her with her balance.  
  
He won't concern himself with her well-being once he's gone back to London.  
  
He holds the door for her.  
  
" _Here, be careful,_ " he says, this time in the correct language.

 

A Ukrainian accent easily explains the inconsistencies in her Russian. Still, she smiles at the feel of his hand at the small of her back, and she gives him a fond, if somewhat sheepish, look, the sort of look Ana Timoshenko would give her husband upon accepting help. " _You'll never let me forget this, will you_?" she asks, walking through the door.   
  
A harried looking woman at the front desk sees them and gives them a questioning look. Irene raises her right hand, her pale skin starting to show signs of swelling. The woman looks at her heels, frowns, and turns to Sherlock, as if expecting an explanation from someone with more obviously sensible choice in footwear.

 

Sherlock's Russian is exemplary, and he explains quickly that his wife fell while they were out dancing. He picks up certain traits from John, namely the sheepish nature of going on date-like activities.  
  
The clinic is busy, but certainly not as busy as an emergency center at a hospital might have been. Equipment seems to be newer and cleaner than other Russian hospitals, and the staff is somewhat less harried. They're handed a clipboard, and she gestures to a series of rooms, roped off by olive-green curtains.  
  
" _Not until our next holiday at least,_ " he responds to her Russian question as he leads her to her bed.

 

She makes a face at the sight of the bed, and gives Sherlock a look that should have simply been that of Ana Timoshenko, of the headstrong wife who cannot believe this is happening, but still somehow managed to be coloured by Irene Adler's annoyance at her own body's weaknesses. The look that said purely 'is this really necessary' even as she takes a seat on the bed, because there is nowhere else _to_ sit in the spartan room.

" _Is that incentive for me to arrange for that next holiday to be soon?_ " she asks, perching on the edge of the bed, her feet dangling off the edge.

 

"Yes," he says quickly. Too quickly. Too much force, too much importance on the fact that he's already missing this.  
  
He reaches out, touching the side of her face with hands that are too gentle to be Sherlock Holmes, but a face that is too coldly concerned to be Dmitri.  
  
In Russian, he tries again. " _I hope we won't spend so long in the actual world that a holiday can't happen."_

 

Her heart does not skip a beat. It would be positively idiotic to insinuate such a thing could as a reaction to sentiment. But his response and the uncharacteristically gentle touch of his hands against her face make something warm but almost painful knot up in the pit of her stomach.

The knowledge that this would end, the admission that neither of them particularly wants the end to be permanent. Pain and pleasure. They couldn't have one without the other. It is, after all, very them.

" _It's what holidays are for, isn't it?_ " she answers, a small, pleased smirk on her lips even as her eyes dilate while she watches him. " _To be interesting when life gets too boring?_ "

A nurse sweeps in mere seconds later, and offers Irene a plastic cup, in quick effective Russian gesturing to the bathroom and informing her of the need for a urine sample.

The request is almost comical, and Irene glares at the woman, " _Is that strictly necessary?_ "

 

" _Go on_ ," he says, giving her a small, slightly awkward smile. The situation, to Dmitri, would be awkward. To Sherlock Holmes, a man to whom urinating into a cup was a common practice for a not insignificant part of his life, it was simply something that needed to be done. They would check for blood, leukocytes, drugs, alcohol, the usual. Then they would set her finger, check her wrist, and give her pain medication (which he would not steal.)  
  
And then they would move on.  
  
Life would become the way it had been, with a new anticipation for holidays.  
  
The mobile phone in his pocket buzzes silently. A text message from a very impatient person on the line.

 

She gives both him and the nurse a mutinous look, Anastasia is in pain and wants to no longer be, so her protest washes over the nurse, who is used to men and women in pain being difficult patients and simply stands firm, though she offers Irene a pair of slippers rather than her heels.  
  
That would soothe Ana's ruffled feathers, and so Irene calms her expression and takes the indicated cup to the indicated restroom and returns with the requested sample. She has to resist the urge to shove it at the woman. It would be hardly satisfying.  
  
Irene takes her seat again, this time tucking her feet beneath her, and glares at the retreating back of the nurse. " _It'll be only a few minutes_ ," she assures them as she leaves. " _The doctor is on his way. He can take a look at your hand, dear, while we run our tests._ "

 

Nurse, 37, used to work for one of the more money-grubbing doctors that frequented larger hospitals. Moved here to try to move herself up, found that impossible by her sexuality. Sherlock can see that all on the retreating nurse, but he says nothing.  
  
He looks at his phone while the Woman produces the sample. Tries to keep from looking like he's far too suspicious about their surroundings. What if Moran were to appear? What if Mycroft gave up on Sweden and decided to hunt faster for his brother?  
  
The Woman reappears and sits down, tucking her feet under herself. Anastasia, the character, all over again. Sherlock remains silent while the nurse leaves, contemplating how, in Russian, the word "woman" and "woman of the night" are only an inflection away.  
  
"I should slip him some money," Sherlock says. "To keep him active with you so we don't stagnate here waiting for you to get relief."  
  
His phone buzzes again.

 

There is a soft buzz, and she tilts her head, not certain it is the clinic. But it stops momentarily and she turns to him, keeping her voice low and abandoning the Ukrainian-touched Russian. "Are you motivated by concern or irritation?" she asks. She is about to add that he's hardly a model patient himself when the olive green curtain twitches aside, and she stops.  
  
A heavy-set man, his hair grey at the temples and his fingers scarred from years of casual domestic abuse (the son, not the wife, Irene suspects), walks in. " _The nurse tells me you have fallen on your hand_?" he says. His expression is bland; he does not expect an answer as he crosses to the bed, gesturing for her to hold out her hand.

 

His phone buzzes again, and he scowls in irritation. He has no desire to be here and watch something as basic as her hand being set, but he also has no desire to deal with this call, either.  
  
He steps over to her and presses his lips to her hair.  
  
" _I'll be right back, dear,_ " he says. Choosing, for once, the worse of two situations. Take care of the phone call, then go back to the Woman.

 

The touch of his lips to her hair is casual, fond, perfectly suited to the part of the concerned husband, slightly more relaxed with the doctor's presence. Irene accepts it, and nods, though her curiosity is understandably roused by the repeated buzz. The mobile in his pocket.  
  
She eyes his retreating back speculatively even as part of her attention is taken up by the doctor, who probes her wrist with quick, if rough, efficiency. He pronounces it a sprain, steps over to the side table that doubles as a storage cabinet, and brings her a wrist brace, prattling on about how she must keep it iced and bound.   
  
Irene nods, bored, and asks about the little finger. He tells her to brace herself, that he will set it in a moment, and then prescribe her painkillers for the pain. Irene bites back a bark of irritation, to tell him to simply get on with it, when the nurse returns, and sets a printout in the doctor's hands, whispering furiously to him in rapid Russian.  
  
The doctor frowns, nods, then looks at Irene. " _Hold on, ma'am,_ " he says, gripping her hand with firm pressure to right the joint of her finger. " _It seems we will have have a complication with the medications._ "  
  
Irene braces herself, her free hand gripping the side of the bed so she does not jerk away in instinct, and she waits until he sets the finger. A sharp pain that replaces the dull ache, and the relief of pressure against her finger.   
  
" _What complication?_ " she asks cautiously.

 

"I told you before, you are _not_ to call me while I'm here," Sherlock barks into the phone the moment he steps outside.  
  
"When are you bringing her to us?"  
  
"Bit of a delay, you'll be fine waiting." His voice is quiet and clipped, purposefully free of any accents.  
  
"We are not pleased by this 'delay'."  
  
"That makes two of us," he replies, turning the mobile off with a jab of his finger.  
  
He takes a breath and mentally reroutes to Russian before he heads back into the clinic.

 

The doctor frowns at her question and lets go of Irene's hand, gesturing to her body. " _The child, of course. We cannot give you the regular medications while you are with child._ "  
  
For a brief second, Irene is certain she has misunderstood. Her Russian is piecemeal, after all, certainly she has misunderstood. "Are you," she asks carefully, switching to English, "trying to insinuate that I am pregnant?"   
  
The nurse looks confused at the sudden language shift. The doctor frowns, and Irene can see as he translates her words and back again. "Yes. Pregnant. You did not know? Your husband, he does not know?"  
  
Her ears ring, and for a moment Irene finds herself unable to breathe. Everything after 'Yes' is meaningless noise, and her mind begins to race. She will need a place to go to ground. She will need Sibyl even sooner. She will need to secure Moriarty's resources. She needs a proper clinic, a hospital.  
  
Irene draws a shaky breath, and the sound of the clinic's door opening reminds her that while she is for the moment alone, she will not be for long.  
  
"I... _I need a moment_ ," she tells the doctor, the nurse. Her hand curls around the wrist brace she has been given and she glances at the door. The nurse looks sympathetic again and nods, stepping back towards the curtain, her hand on the doctor's arm. " _Some fresh air. I--_ "   
  
She is not certain what she means to say, but the words come quickly even as she uncurls her legs, sets her slippered feet on the ground. " _Please let me tell him. This is very unexpected._ " The doctor nods, allowing the nurse to pull him away, and as soon as they exit the small curtained area, Irene slips out behind them and runs.  
  
She leaves the stilettos behind.

 


	3. Fathoming the Inconceivable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The revelation of pregnancy drives Irene Adler underground without a word. Meanwhile, Sherlock Holmes deals with the fallout of his own indiscretion, an indiscretion that, when coupled with the Woman's sudden disappearance, may suddenly affect more lives than just their own.

Another text, this one snappish and irritated. Sherlock can feel the tone, even if he can't hear the voice. This is all idiotic. They're going to start getting aggressive.  
  
It's time he let the Woman know.  
  
He goes to her bed and pulls the curtain aside. She's gone, but the heels remain.  
  
The nurse, looking a little startled by his abrupt appearance, gestures to the door. "She stepped outside," the nurse says, in fair English.  
  
Outside? He considers the shoes, how cautiously she would have guarded them. She would have held onto her shoes, onto a piece of herself, unless---  
  
Unless she was running. He considers his phone, the words he said in clear English, and the way she noticed the fact that he had been receiving a not insignificant number of messages. It would not have been hard for her to put the pieces together, perhaps incorrectly.  
  
He turns and walks carefully towards the door, breaking into a run before he gets to it.

 

Irene runs. She does not make for the front entrance of the clinic, instead sweeping back into the corridors used by the staff. She is not certain where she is going, but she runs. She hails a taxi in shaken Russian and snaps at the cabbie to drive, even as he protests that she has not given him a destination. She tells him the Kremlin, then to circle the city, and Irene Adler tries to remember how to breathe.  
  
She is gone for three days.  
  
The first day, she spends hours being driven aimlessly through St. Petersburg, repeatedly dialing Sibyl Vane's phone number until the woman picks up, concerned. Irene's instructions then are rapid-fire, manic. She instructs Sibyl to buy property in several cities around Europe, two in the States, and one in Sydney. She gives Sibyl access to the revenue being funded through the Red Door Casino, and tells her to move quickly.  
  
The second day, Irene has not slept, and her hands curl around a cup of mediocre coffee at an American ex-pat's cafe. She has changed her clothes, into slacks and a loose blouse, nothing that stands out. She sits at the cafe, staring at her hands, and slips the amethyst and diamond ring from her hand, unhooks the pearl choker from her throat.  
  
But she cannot bring herself to throw them into the garbage. Instead they find their way into her pocket, and Irene makes another phone call, this time to Sebastian Moran.  
  
She tries not to think on how strange it feels, to no longer have the weight of the ring on her finger.

 

There are several things that Sherlock Holmes does not do.  
  
#1: He does not contact Mycroft. Contacting Mycroft is a symbol of panicking, which he is also not doing. Contacting Mycroft also is a sign that he does not feel in control of the situation, and his elder brother can assist. Contacting Mycroft is also admitting that he does not know where the Woman has gone.  
  
#2: As was mentioned in the previous (Section #1), Sherlock Holmes does not panic. There is, of course, nothing to panic about. The Woman would vanish for days before, and back when they were first acquainted in London, she would vanish for months, and he was often left with an annoying fondness over her disappearance. This time, he will admit, is different. Firstly, the Woman left without any warning, and secondly, she is somewhere, mildly injured, and has no idea who is looking for her.  
  
#3: Sherlock Holmes does not panic.  
  
He is also completely unable to find the Woman. For all that they teased about their abilities to find one another, when the Woman does not want to be found, she is exceptionally good at not being found. Sherlock hunted down old members of Jim's organization, stalked Sibyl's email, and interrogated the bodyguards of the politician she had been seeing. He also found the photographer who was looking at them and broke his collarbone and femur. No sign of her.  
  
He should, he decided, simply let her stay hidden. Lead the people who were consistently bothering him on his mobile away from her, and just _go_. He didn't need to explain himself.  
  
This did not explain why he decided to break into the file room at the clinic. No, breaking into the file room at the clinic would signal that he was still looking for information about the Woman's whereabouts, or if she left some sort of clue, something he might be able to use to find her.  
  
He pulls the file out, just as his mobile buzzes. This time, it is a photograph of the Woman, taken by a homeless man near a cafe. Sherlock wasted no time in utilizing the homeless of St. Petersburg, trying to keep an eye on his new friends, and to see if they could find the Woman.  
  
He tucks the file in his coat without looking at it, and heads back, towards the hotel.

 

The third day, Irene finds herself sitting in that same cafe, staring into her coffee. The coffee is decaf this time, despite the fact that she does not remember if she has slept. Sibyl and Moran have both gone silent, since her rapid-fire instructions of the last two days, and Irene is certain that even if Moran balks, Sibyl's preparations will be enough.  
  
Which leaves Irene alone to think, staring into a cup of black coffee that does absolutely nothing to clear her mind or sharpen her thoughts, which are already racing. She does not want to think on either the lack of a weight on her finger. Nor does she want to think on the _thing_ that has changed everything. But the latter is physical and the former is sentimental and so she thinks on the new sensitivity of her breasts, on the change in her eating habits, the hunger that is not as easily ignored as before. She thinks on the sensitivity of her nose just three days prior, when she could detect hints of clove cigarettes and exhaust (she pointedly does not think of who she detects them on).   
  
She thinks, and acknowledges the idiot doctor's test was likely correct. And she sips the coffee mechanically as she details how this would complicate her new web. She mentally tallies the difficulties this would bring her, mentally lists everything into positive and negative columns, and she knows the logical conclusion. She cannot run Moriarty's web burdened this way. Not now.  
  
She sets the cooling coffee back down and rises from her seat at the cafe, walking to a private hospital some blocks off. She tells the woman at the desk that she would like to terminate a pregnancy, and is shuffled into an examination room to await the doctor.  
  
Staring at the sterile walls decorated with aging posters, Irene forces herself to think on the logical thing to do, rather than on the amethyst ring sitting like a lump of iron in her pocket, or the pearl necklace sitting beside it. She reminds herself that she knows better than to let sentiment make her decisions, reminds herself that sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side.  
  
That this _thing_ that is causing her so much trouble is little more than a similar chemical defect.  
  
She tells herself this, but the repetition does not make the knowledge any easier to swallow, does not lighten the knowledge of what she carries in her pocket or body. She tells herself all this as she waits for the doctor and the termination drugs but it rings hollow, and she finds herself reaching into her pocket, taking the ring out and running her fingers over the faceted stones.  
  
She tells herself that walking away from the hospital will change the nature of their holidays. But hasn't the nature of their holiday already changed? They have as good as admitted that there will be others, that returning to his life and her death would be completely impossible now no matter how much they pretended it would not.  
  
What was one more change?  
  
She is Irene Adler, she will make the world as she wants it to be, pregnant or no, child or no.  
  
The doctor does not come, and Irene leaves the examination room without ever having seen him. The smell of antiseptic clings to her as she walks through the streets of St. Petersburg, as she returns to the hotel.   
  
The ring is not on her finger, neither is the necklace around her throat, but she holds it in her fist as she slides her key into the door, holds it as a talisman as she pushes it open and steps into the hotel room, circles under her eyes, her lack of sleep and food apparent, traces of the hospital still clinging to her as she says absolutely nothing and makes for the shower.

 

The key turns, and Sherlock drops to the ground behind the bed, grabbing for the gun he not-so-recently acquired. With the people chasing him now for what he failed to deliver, obtaining a new weapon was essential, and now, with an unexpected visitor, it might need to be used.  
  
He stands as the door opens, and holds the gun up, steadying it towards the average height of a Russian man's head.  
  
Instead, it is the Woman who stands there. Words appear around her, things that are obvious on a Woman who has very little about her that is ordinary or obvious.  
  
No sleep. Little food. Coffee consumed recently. Stayed outdoors and in cafes, recently removed jewelry from finger and throat. Hair unbrushed. Exhausted. Recently in a clinic, but did not get undressed.  
  
He lowers the gun. What would John Watson do in this moment? How would he fix what Sherlock had done, the very Not Good thing that was now chasing them again, and the obvious reason why she left (though not why she returned).  
  
"I know why you left."

 

The gun is unexpected, and the sight of it stops Irene until he lowers it. Wariness, surprise and confusion are all easily read in quick succession in his face and body language. The guilt and his words set her on edge even as she feels too exhausted and wrung out to properly dissect them. "Do you?" she says, turning away from him and resuming her path to the bath. She does not close the door behind her as she enters, as she sets the amethyst ring on the counter, along with the pearl necklace.  
  
After that, she begins shedding clothes, one article at a time, slow and methodical. She looks at herself in the mirror as she sheds the layers, seeing the changes in her body that she should never have missed but did anyway. Was it purposeful ignorance that kept her from seeing the increased swell of her breasts? Her tired mind conjures images of how other changes will manifest, how her abdomen will swell in the next few months, how the _thing_ will continue to grow. And it is an image she is not certain she can face yet, so she looks away from the mirror and turns the shower on, letting the water warm to something just a few degrees shy of scalding.  
  
"And the firearm is to protect yourself from me?"

 

"Of course not."  
  
He keeps the gun in his hand, and steps over to watch her. She undresses, and he can't work out what that means. She's looking at the scars she's acquired since arriving here? Why is she making herself physically vulnerable? Is it to show how she doesn't care that they're after them?  
  
Or is he trying to fit the clues into the answer he's worked out. This is a common folly of Scotland Yard, and not something Sherlock likes to follow.  
  
"You came back," he says. "Why?"

 

The steam curling out of the shower stall is inviting, and Irene steps into the spray without acknowledging that he's followed. She doesn't answer right away, instead letting the steaming hot water pour through her hair and over her skin. It is almost painfully hot, but the water sluices away the days, the feel of panic and sour fear, the dust and dirt and gritty coffee of the last three days. There is some small comfort in the mundane, in putting herself to rights and slipping on her armour again.  
  
It reminds her that very little has actually changed.  
  
She reaches for the hotel's complimentary shampoo and begins working a palmful of it into her hair one handed. What did it mean, that he knew why she'd run, but that he would ask why she'd come back? Surely he would have simply expected her to terminate the pregnancy. It would have been the logical thing to do. She'd convinced herself it was the logical thing to do, after all. Before sentiment had gotten in the way. But if she had, why _wouldn't_ she have come back, as if nothing had happened.  
  
"You expected I wouldn't," she finally says. "Did you expect I'd make my way to Moscow, or just disappear?"

 

"Disappearing was never the plan for you," he replies. He watches her bathe herself without any or generalized sexuality. He's trying to see what she's washing away, tries to see what the little white letters around her mean before they go down the pipes with the bathwater.  
  
Oddly, and he supposes it _is_ odd, he's not reveling in her return. It isn't like Montreal, where he had been convinced of her death, and seeing her again was like drinking in something he thought he'd never experience again. Here, some part of him knew that he would see her again, knew it completely and utterly. Even if it were doing battle over this, this mistake he's made, he would be able to look at her again.  
  
"And Moscow would be too obvious. I anticipated you'd stay here until you felt safe enough to travel."

 

The soap is next, scrubbing away the smell of antiseptic from her skin, her hands running over her breasts, hips, the small swell of her abdomen that has always been there and is not any sign of her pregnancy. It helps, but not nearly as much as it had before.   
  
She tells herself it is simply the lack of sleep, the lack of food.  
  
Tilting back her head to allow the hot spray to rinse soap from her hair and body, Irene chuckles wryly. "Safe enough to travel? I'm under the impression that I have at least six months before I should even begin to be concerned about not traveling."

 

No, wait. That doesn't make sense. Did she think it would take them six months to find her?  
  
"That seems an arbitrary number," he says. "Particularly if you continue to treat yourself this way."  
  
He's one to speak, of course. The number of times he's given up on sleep, food, and other necessities for as long as was necessary. The Woman, however, is clearly not as adept as he. She's also been through more physical strain in recent months than before.

 

She frowns, momentarily perplexed by his remark on the time, but that is brushed aside by his remark about her self-care. Irene steps out of the direct spray of the shower long enough to wipe the rivulets of soapy water from her eyes and glare at him, displeased.  
  
"Don't start coddling me now, Mr. Holmes. Just because I'm--" And the word sticks in her throat, because she cannot say it. Because to say it would make fact precipitate out of unspoken knowledge, because she is still not quite able to accept it herself. She swallows it back, and steps back under the spray.

 

"---being hunted?"  
  
Except that isn't what she means at all, is it?  
  
He considers the manner in which she left, the fact that she's here, now. The fact that she left from the clinic, and went to another one but never undressed. Health, then? She's not caring for herself, or is she simply ill?  
  
A list of potential health issues appears next to the Woman. Cancers. Autoimmune illnesses. Blood-borne pathogens. Latent sexual infections.  
  
Except she didn't have a variety of tests before she left the clinic. She had her hand set and a urine test. Many of the illnesses listed vanish. Something that could be determined by a urinalysis. She went back to the clinic but decided not to be treated, so she is still ill. Something that a hospital would let one leave of their own volition. More illnesses vanish. Something that would not affect her ability to travel for at least six months. So an incubating time of at least six to eight months. Incubating. Gestating? All of the list apart from one vanish.  
  
Pregnancy.

 

He didn't know.  
  
'Being hunted'. He thinks she knows she is being hunted which means he knows that she is. She wants to focus on that, but her mind focuses on the fact that he didn't know, and as she steps out of the shower, water dripping through her hair and down her back, she looks at him and she can almost _see_ the possibilities he works through being discarded until only one remains.  
  
All expression drains from her face as she sees realization slam home for him, and Irene sets her jaw. She pulls a towel from the rack next to the shower stall and wraps it swiftly around her body, not even waiting to dry her feet before she sweeps past him, out of the bathroom and into the hotel room proper.  
  
She keeps the towel wrapped firmly around her torso as she pulls open drawers, find clothes. "Who exactly is it that is hunting me?" she snaps, avoiding the sudden knowledge between them. "You didn't expect me to return, which means you thought that I would think you couldn't be trusted."

 

He stares at her, wide-eyed.  
  
Of the things he expected, the result was not this. Logically, it makes sense. The amount of sexual intercourse they've had without any contraceptive only put them at an incredible risk for pregnancy. He remembers vaguely thinking they should obtain condoms at some point, but never really moving forward with it. And now---  
  
He clears his throat.  
  
"You're not planning on terminating, so does that mean that you want to keep the child, or give it away?"

 

The idea of _giving it away_ is so patently ridiculous to Irene that she barks a harsh laugh. "Do you really think anyone out _there_ could handle something even remotely like yourself? Because even the best nannies money could buy could never handle _me_ , Mr. Holmes."  
  
She pulls on her knickers without shedding the towel, and she knows it is because she does not want him to try to deduce anything about the Inconvenience now that he knew where to look. And the fact that she feels the need to hide it irritates Irene.  
  
She turns her back to him, sheds the towel, and pulls on her brassiere, and a blouse on top of it before she turns back to face him. The shower and emotion have brought a flush to her cheeks, made more prominent by her exhausted paleness, and her eyes are bright despite the dark rings beneath.  
  
"Why am I being hunted?"

 

"I had been trying to secure a deal on your behalf," he replies. A half-answer, the way that her answer was a half-answer.  
  
If this is how they are going to communicate, then it is how they will communicate. He will stand and wait as long as it takes. Or, at least, until someone comes looking for them.  
  
"I have no intention of having a Volvo or taking it to football practice," he says. He has no idea what a real father would do anyway. And the idea of himself as a father is---well, just as absurd as the thought of the Woman as a mother. They're far too selfish.

 

"You assume I'd let you see it at all."  
  
Anger, exhaustion, the heat of the shower, it all makes the blood pound loud in her ears, and Irene grasps the edge of the chest of drawers to ground herself. She will not bloody _faint_ in front of Sherlock Holmes.

 

Sherlock considers this and finds it absolutely acceptable. He has no desire to be a father, and if the Woman wants to keep it, she can. He can continue on his life, and not have to become...someone else for a very small fragile thing he could easily break. Of course, it would be interesting to see what became of it. Would it be clever like him, cunning like her? And would the Woman not want the holidays they'd planned because of it?  
  
"Are you angry because of this?" he asks, sounding genuinely confused. "Because anger at misdirecting you I can understand, but not at---" He gestures towards her. "This."

 

His confusion drains some of the anger from her face, and she studies him despite her tiredness. His confusion is genuine, and somehow it is harder to be angry when he is so obviously confused. Perhaps because he will not push back at her anger now, and her anger is only useful in masking her disgust at her own sentiment if he is angry along with her.  
  
She sighs and closes her eyes, taking a deep, steadying breath, as if to will the blood pounding in her head to behave itself. She doesn't open her eyes to look at him when she speaks, "The logical thing to do would be to terminate. It's hardly efficient to try and run a criminal network while _incubating_. And it's hardly a proper environment for raising a houseplant, much less anything even remotely intelligent." A dry laugh snakes into her voice at that; she's stating the obvious, and she knows it.   
  
She opens her eyes then and gives him a sidelong look. "Believe me, I _have_ run the calculus. What would you deduce about me, if I were a client who walked into your flat?"

 

He takes a step, as though to pace around her. Now that he's aware of her pregnancy, it seems obvious. Increased sense of smell, tenderness to the breasts, and the briefness and irregularity of her menstrual cycle (he had thought it important to take notice.)  
  
He looks her over. "Woman, early thirties. Recent traumatic injury to right wrist and finger, resulting from a fall of no more than six feet onto a carpeted floor. Scarring on left leg shows injury within the last eight weeks that required surgery and still causes pain. Woman continues to stand straight and firm without asking for a chair, not because she's forgotten about the pain, but because she's too strong willed to give into the pain, shows a strength of character and a stubbornness that could be admirable."  
  
He takes another step around her. All other scars are more than a year old, shows the recent, more dangerous scarring is newer. Ring on left hand, recently removed, shows difficulty in dealing with a relationship. With this information---"  
  
He stops as his brain moves only just faster than his mouth, and the pieces click. If it weren't the Woman standing before him, if he weren't the new piece in her life causing these injuries, then...well, then...  
  
"I would deduce that the Woman was involved with someone dangerous or abusive, and she should use her obvious strong will to leave."

 

He rattles off deductions quickly, and most of them are accurate, though she tells herself that is only because he had been present for almost everything he'd deduced, and the others he'd been told.  
  
She shakes her head again, runs her left hand through her wet hair, and lets go of the drawer. He's drawn close in his deduction and she isn't certain she wants his closeness at the moment. Though Irene isn't certain what she _does_ want. She pads back over to the bathroom, picks up the ring and pearl choker from the counter, and stands in the doorway again, turning the ring idly between her fingers, the stones gleaming in the light.  
  
"How ordinary."

 

"As are holidays with old lovers," he replies. He feels oddly melancholy about those words. What they have is far from ordinary---or is it? Is it really just an ordinary attraction that leads to ordinary consequences? Would the Woman be held down because of this?  
  
"That ring has made it quite the distance," he says. They have made it quite the distance. Time apart, yes, but they always managed to find each other. How strange. Few people in his life stayed like this.

 

She looks down at the ring, runs her fingers along the purple stone, the halo of diamonds circling it. "It seemed a shame to leave it behind."  
  
She doubted she could, even if she wanted to. Irene looks down at it for a long moment, and she considers how far it had come, how many cities _they_ have danced through. How many people would consider what they have a holiday? How many would think of the murders committed, the jewels stolen, the criminals terrified, the gunshots survived, and consider it _just_ a holiday?  
  
"This doesn't change anything," she tells him quietly. "I won't have it make me ordinary."

 

He straightens, lifting his jaw slightly with her words.  
  
"Good."  
  
Because there are many ways for the Woman to die, and the worst would be if she lost her spirit. Lost what made her the Woman. He would see the husk of the Woman standing before him, but everything that made her _herself_ gone. It's what he imagines happened to Mycroft, changing him from the brother he admired into the one he loathes. Some part of himself died.  
  
He is glad that the Woman won't follow suit.

 

That earns him a very small, genuine smile. Irene squares her shoulders, but there is obvious effort in it. Three days, was it? No sleep. She doesn't remember if she'd eaten. She'd smelled coffee on the clothes she'd shed. So she'd drunk something at least.  
  
"Your angry friends can wait," she tells him as she slips the ring back on her left hand (she tells herself that is simply because the brace holding her right wrist and her finger in place will not allow it to fit easily). She keeps her hold on the pearl choker as she crosses the room to stand next to the barely touched bed.   
  
"I need rest."

 

She does. It's obvious. Very obvious that she needs to rest. At the same time, he isn't certain how long it will be until their whereabouts are properly discovered.  
  
He nods, moving over to the chair near the bed to sit, watch over her in case someone arrives. "I need to ask you one favor," he says. "We can never tell Mycroft about this."  
  
He pauses. "He would be too _excited_. It would be embarrassing."

 

She almost asks him to join her. Almost. Because there had been something comfortable and comforting in waking up tangled with him as she had on the train into Stockholm. But she doesn't, because she is already scraped too raw by sentiment, because the new knowledge of the thing incubating within her still sits too strangely against her skin.  
  
Instead, she laughs and all but falls into the bed, her eyes drifting closed before her head hits the pillow.   
"I'd rather have Moran babysit than your brother," she informs him, her voice soft with the need for sleep. "But don't say never, Mr. Holmes. I can think of at least two scenarios in which the news could give him an apoplectic fit."

 

"I think he'd be far too excited about telling my mother," he replies, voice thick with irritation at the very _idea_ of his mother's sheer joy over the whole scenario. "And attempting to drag you and it to Christmas dinners."  
  
His chest feels strange. Slightly painful. He'd say he was having some sort of a lung issue, but it isn't that. It's a tightness, a feeling of change. Emotion, sentiment. Watching the Woman fall asleep, protecting them both from his own folly, and this newfound knowledge.  
  
Biologically, becoming a parent is the most logical thing. Spreading of one's genes and so on. It is one of the reasons that sex in general is enjoyable to humans. And, really, no one better to mate with than the Woman, whose intellect and grace are unparalleled. But...it was not part of the plan. She won't force him into any undue role as a parent, nor will she force any responsibility on him, but---it is there, that need to be (and he cringes even as he thinks this) _fatherly_.  
  
How on Earth will they stay themselves?

 


	4. Pregnancy and Betrayal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The criminals Sherlock Holmes has betrayed are closing in as he and the Woman attempt to escape their net. Meanwhile, Irene Adler must come to terms with the pregnancy that has changed everything, and whether or not the Consulting Detective will remain a staple of her life.

She wants to respond, to tell him Christmas dinners are pointless and idiotic and ordinary, but sleep claims her before she can. And she sleeps hard and deep, the unconscious rest of someone thoroughly exhausted, mentally, emotionally, and physically.  
  
So it takes a few moments for Irene to realize she is being shaken awake by a firm hand on the covers, a few more seconds for her to swim out of the iron grip of unconsciousness, to remember where she is, and who the only person who would shake her awake would be.  
  
She blinks, pushing her hair out of her eyes (hair dry, the pillow still damp). Hours then. Four hours? Five? Three? "No gunshots yet," she says, her voice low and burred with sleep. "But you expect something may happen soon."

 

"Three cars have pulled up in front of the hotel," he replies, stepping over to the window. "Two armed men in each."  
  
He had watched her sleep for a long time. There was a lot to contemplate. He considered the Woman's decision to keep the child, and what that would mean for her. He had it easier in many ways, because the child would be under the Woman's care, not his own. And Sherlock would face no changes to his life, just the addition of the child whenever the Woman arrived. This did not make him feel guilty, not really, but it did confuse him. Why did the Woman want to keep the child? Sentiment? Curiosity? He became painfully aware of his own inadequacies when it came to understanding the Woman's psyche. He had been so wrapped up in his thoughts, he nearly missed the sound of the cars as they pulled up.  
  
"Likely, they'll kill me and capture you," he says. "I'm the one they're truly angry at."

 

The rest was not enough to properly reset Irene's equilibrium, but it was enough to bring her back to sharp functionality, especially with the aid of adrenaline. She is on her feet and pulling on trousers by the time he offers up a scenario and Irene scoffs, her eyes sweeping through the room.  
  
"Six of them, two of us, and only one firearm between us, I assume?" The necklace finds its way into her pocket instinctively, and she finishes dressing. Could they lose their pursuers before they found the hotel room? Would they follow them to Moscow?   
  
She didn't have enough data, not enough information to make a decision, or a plan. Or enough time to figure it out herself. Necessity made her ask, though she was none-too-happy about having to admit it, "Exactly what promises did you fail to deliver on 'on my behalf' to have them out for blood?"

 

He sighs. "An exchange," he says. "Your time for their obedience. When I failed to deliver you, they assumed I had been lying. Very temperamental. Considering they've thought I worked for my brother, I wouldn't be surprised if my hesitance was interpreted as stalling."  
  
He looks in her direction. She appears better-rested, and he refuses to comment on what they can and cannot do based on her health. He won't insult her that way. Having the child is her choice, so is following his lead.  
  
"We can exit through the roof. There's an attic entrance through the closet."

 

To say that she glares daggers at him would have been a severe understatement. And it is not the mess that his failed plan has made that carries the brunt of her anger, but the fact that he had attempted it at all, the fact that he had attempted it behind her back, as if she were not perfectly capable of gaining her own allies.  
  
She is, to put it mildly, displeased.  
  
"And then what?" she asks. "Hope they don't follow us out of the city?" She gestures for the firearm.  
  
"How useful are they?" She thinks she already knows the answer. He wouldn't waste his time going behind her back for petty, undisciplined criminals.

 

"They were on Mycroft's list as 'extremely pertinent'. I knew I could convince them to meet with you, but in case they were as uncooperative as Mycroft had insinuated..."  
  
He sighs, moving towards the closet. The exit through the roof isn't his favored escape plan, but it's far better than anything else. He had hoped to be farther away and be better prepared, but he'd also hoped to avoid them altogether.  
  
"We can escape without being detected."

 

"You're avoiding the question. Which means you know you won't like my reaction at the answer," she says, not moving from where she stands, within line of sight of the door.   
  
"Which means they'll keep looking if they don't find us here." She arches an eyebrow at him, crossing her arms beneath her breasts, still immovable. "Why shouldn't I meet with them now?"

 

He steps back over to the window and gestures out.  
  
"What do you see?"

 

"A stubborn idiot who's bitten off more than he can chew," she snaps, looking pointedly at him.  
  
Still, she moves to the window, careful to keep from presenting a suitable target. She pulls the curtains back just enough to look down.  
  
She can see the men in question still around the cars, one of them with his fingers to his ear. A faulty earpiece, perhaps. But the gesture is lowered quickly, as if he realizes it can be seen as a tell. Well trained, their motions rote. But there is a lack of focus to their movements. They know they are here, they know what they have to do, but the hesitance speaks to a lack of leadership.  
  
"Well trained. At least one of them is ex-military," she says. "Not very highly ranked, not with that propensity to violence in his family. But they still look to him for direction, which means the others are no better. Followers that need a firm hand, even if they don't realize it quite yet." She doesn't tell him at least two of them are misogynist dullards, he'd no doubt think that would work in his argument's favour. Neither does she point out that the de facto leader's agitated, uneasy. He'd clearly had high hopes for the agreement, and now found himself forced to act lest he lose control of his companions.  
  
She gently eases the curtain back into place, to avoid the telltale sway. "You do realize this merely convinces me my plan is better than yours."

 

He sighs. "Look at the looseness of his wedding band," Sherlock says. "Doesn't care for it, only wears it when he wants to. That, combined with the haircut and the fact that he makes his wife wash all of his clothing calls out misogynist. And from the bitten-off cuticles of our ex-military man, he has a problem with anxiety. Ergo, your plan will make our most violent anxious and at least one of the others angry at your impertinence."  
  
A pause.  
  
"No doubt you'd have seen that, too, if you were looking."

 

"Your guilty conscience is colouring your judgment," she says baldly. "The _two_ misogynists are perfectly happy to follow their leader. Neither of them have even enough initiative to deviate from his clothing choice by so much as a pair of shoes. They're only a threat if our dishonourably discharged military man wants them to be."  
  
Irene reaches for the pen off the hotel desk, which she uses as a makeshift hairpin to work her now-dry hair into a twist at the back of her head. "They think you've betrayed them by not delivering a meeting with me. Your refusing to answer means you believe they will continue chasing us down. The only way to keep them off our trail is to allow their anger to run their course, and there is no better way to do that than to deliver the original meeting, with the addition of allowing them to see you properly disciplined for what they'll perceive as your failure."  
  
She gives him a sharp, cold smile and squares her shoulders. She tightens the brace around her right wrist with brisk efficiency as she continues, "It's precisely what you wanted when you tried to strike this deal, isn't it? For me to have them in my pocket and in your brother's way?"

 

"They're not the ones you were meant to be meeting with. They're the hired guns."  
  
He takes another brief glance out the window, and then takes another step towards the closet.  
  
"I've been informed I'm not meant to be seen alive." He's not afraid, not so much. But he is _aware_.

 

He is _infuriating_ , and for a moment Irene is tempted not to follow him. Because he expects she will, because it is predictable that she will, because she cannot leave him to the consequences of his own idiotic action even if she desperately wants to.  
  
The pearl choker in her pocket might not be a physical collar, but he has her caught all the same.  
  
She rolls her eyes and follows him to the closet's escape route. "I'd say now would be a good time to tell me what other 'helpful' secrets you've been keeping from me," she tells him. "But I have no illusions you'd tell me even if I did."

 

"I know you won't believe me, but I was trying to help," he says, tersely. "If you remember, you were more than a little angry with me before." A pause. "Or, irritated, at least."  
  
And that was, of course, his own fault. But that isn't the point. The point is, he was trying to help, and now he's trying to escape that. How often does this happen to him? More often than he'd like to admit, really.  
  
He doesn't expect to see her behind him when he turns, but there is no small amount of relief on his face when he sees her.

 

She closes the closet door behind her to hide their passage, but she continues as she follows. "If you were trying to help, you wouldn't have kept your maneuvering secret."  
  
That is, of course, an absolutely ridiculous assertion, and she realizes it. They do nothing but keep secrets from each other.  
  
And she won't be hurt by it. She refuses to. It was idiotic. "I told you once before, I won't be in your debt again, Mr. Holmes."

 

"Aren't I indebted to you?" he replies. He feels like a child again, arguing with Mycroft about something he genuinely doesn't understand while Mycroft calls him a _stupid little boy_. Always so stupid.  
  
He gestures in her direction. "I've _burdened_ you."  
  
There is a harsh knock on the door.

 

The look she shoots him is both scathing and offended, and she is about to answer when the knock on the door cuts her off.  
  
Irene thinks quickly, and opens the closet door again, slipping on an Iberian Spanish accent again, her voice thick with feigned sleep. " _Come back later, I don't need the sheets made,_ " she mumbles loudly in broken Russian.   
  
She drops the accent as quickly as she had put it on, and all but pushed him towards his intended escape route. "Don't you _dare_ play the martyr for my decisions. The only thing I am burdened with at the moment is a wallowing consulting detective," she hisses at him.

 

He moves in the direction of the escape route. Now, yes, apparently they're doing this now. He lets out an irritated sigh, even as he moves to pull himself up the closet and pushes the ceiling panel aside.  
  
"Your decision is based on sentiment I instilled in you by indulging in our mutual attraction, which I should never have done," he says. "Because now _all_ of your plans are going to change. And, in turn, none of mine are."

 

She swears fluently and rapidly in Basque in response, enumerating personal failings of pride, self-centeredness, and male egotism. She ends with a particularly biting comment about his hair as she pulls herself up the closet and through the ceiling.  
  
"No, my plans have simply accelerated. Not that my plans are _any_ of your business," she informs him, switching back to English.

 

He listens to the insults blankly. He's used to being insulted. Normally in English, but other languages come into play at times. The Woman's assertions about self-centeredness are pretty common, actually, and he takes them with the same bored state as a storm grate takes water. He climbs after her, sliding the ceiling panel back into place just as he hears the door to the hotel room burst open.  
  
He hisses his response. "Clearly you don't want me to feel anything about this situation."

 

"Isn't it what _you_ want?" she hisses back. She has the presence of mind to keep quiet, but there is absolutely no mistaking the heat in her words. "To believe in yourself as a higher power? The unfeeling machine, the consulting detective?"  
  
But it had always been part of her game, the thrill of unraveling the facade, the ability to force him to show those emotions he pretended so often not to have. Except now she does not want them obvious, wants him to wrap himself in the detective's logic again as she tried to wall her own concerns away. "I will not let it change anything," she continues. "You will go back to London, and I will have Jim Moriarty's network and _nothing changes_."  
  
She is, perhaps, trying to convince herself.

 

"And what? Leave the baby with the _nannies_ while you run a vast criminal network?" Even as he hisses this back to her in annoyance, it actually makes a great deal of sense. It could be a bit like a day-job, but that also bothers him. Perhaps it's because he doesn't fully understand parenthood, he's only seen what he knows from his own family.  
  
"My mother gave up her career, her whole life, for children. You can't do that, it would be wrong."

 

"Of course not, I'd leave it with Sibyl."  
  
She should be flattered. She should be pleased that he does not want her to give up the promise of her new network for the inconvenience. And she is pleased, though that pleasure is tempered by irritation at his continued insistence on... well, everything.  
  
"I am not made for domesticity, Mr. Holmes. I wouldn't last six months through that boredom," she says quietly, firmly. It is absurd that they are having this conversation here, in a crawl space, but there is much that is absurd at the moment. "I will not give up my ambitions for this thing. It will adapt to my life, not the other way around."  
  
It is, perhaps, obvious she was not fit for traditional motherhood. But then she is Irene Adler. The world would bow to her whims or she would make it.

 

"Sibyl Vane? She'll teach it normal things," he hisses. "If you're going to try to raise it like one of us, you should give it a proper educator!"  
  
He moves slightly as he speaks, and the flooring beneath him creaks. There's a shout below, and a bullet hole whizzes up through the ceiling, a good distance from them.  
  
"This way!"

 

She curses silently as the bullet breaks through the ceiling, and follows, avoiding the spot his foot had landed that had made the flooring beneath him squeak.  
  
"Implying I won't be a _proper_ educator?" she snipes back. "Then who would you suggest? Your dear brother, perhaps."

 

Sherlock looks back at her with a utterly insulted look, so quickly that he actually slips, falling down onto the attic flooring. The bullets flutter again, this time far too close for Sherlock's liking. He climbs back to his feet.  
  
"I don't want Mycroft to have a _word_ of its existence," he snaps. "He'd try to raise it, or worse, give it to our mother."

 

He falls and as he climbs back to his feet she reaches out with her left hand and grabs his wrist, pulling him with her. "Who's left that fits your _exacting_ standards for an educator, Mr. Holmes? You? You don't want anything to do with it."

 

"I didn't say that!" he snaps.  
  
He freezes, then, despite the gunshots. His face, he imagines, must look like he feels: Purely shocked.  
  
He doesn't want to be a father, he tells himself. It's true. He'd be a horrible father, he's practically a child himself. But to be excluded completely, to lose the Woman and this---this thing that they don't know yet, it upsets him.  
  
He gestures. "Down the ladder."

 

"We're not having this conversation right now," Irene says as she swings onto the ladder and begins to descend.  
  
Personally, she doesn't want to have this conversation at all. She wants to revel in the last of their holiday, she wants to make Jim Moriarty's network her own, and continue making her merry way in the world. She is uncertain what place the child would have in that plan, but she will not upturn her plans for it. It will fit or she will make it fit.  
  
It will, she is willing to admit, be quite an interesting experiment.

 

Aren't they? Sherlock is even more willing to give up on this conversation than she is.  
  
He waits until she's down the ladder and slides down it himself, gently gripping the sides to keep from crashing as he lands.  
  
"Motorcycle," he says, nodding. "Belongs to 4C. Well---"  
  
He pulls some keys out of his pocket. " _Belonged._ "

 

A grudging smile spreads over her face, and Irene glances at the key ring. "The aspiring rock musician from Helsinki," she says approvingly. "Must have lifted that from her bags. Her trousers are far too tight for your pick pocketing."

 

"Make a detective of you yet," he says, a smile appearing on his own face.  
  
For a moment, in the smile, he forgets what he's just learned. He forgets that they're forever altered because of it. For a moment, he is just the Consulting Detective and she is the Woman. And it is good, again.

 

She looks away from him and down the street for the aforementioned motorcycle. Soft rumbles are beginning in the hotel, residents and staff alike jumping at the gunshots they have heard. No doubt someone would investigate soon and hopefully force their pursuers to slow to avoid detection.  
  
Despite their pursuers, she stands more relaxed, more like herself. This is what she wants from the rest of their holiday, this is how she wants them both, the Consulting Detective and the Woman, arguing over deductions and misbehaviour. Not the pregnancy she will not terminate, not the idea of the thing that will result.  
  
"I'd drive you out of business in London if I took it up," she answers with a laugh as she spots the motorcycle and heads for it.

 

"You'd have better marketing," he agrees. "But I have a better blogger."  
  
Have. Had? No, John would welcome him back. It would be fun. A fun surprise for him.  
  
"You can drive," he says, untucking the gun from his trousers. "I'll keep us covered." He wouldn't mention that there was only one helmet. She, as the driver, would be the logical one to wear it.

 

She glares at him, as if she knows exactly what he is thinking. And she has a pretty good idea when she spots the single helmet. "You are a terrible manipulator," she responds. She looks over the motorcycle and shakes her head. "Unfortunately for your carefully laid out plans, I don't know how to drive a motorcycle."  
  
She makes a distasteful face at the admission. She hates admitting there is something she does not know how to do, but this was hardly the time to learn.

 

He looks positively stunned. Something the Woman doesn't know how to do? He steps over to the helmet and looks at her again. Logically, he should wear it. If something were to graze his head and he went unconscious, he would kill them both.  
  
He holds the gun between them. Trust, really. He didn't trust her before, and this is hardly the first time it's gotten them both into trouble. But she has more to lose now. She won't turn against him.  
  
He holds the gun out for her.

 

As much as she thrills to stun him, this time she is more annoyed than pleased; after all, this time his surprise is due to her inability. "I preferred flying to careening through the streets," she says irritably. Still, she takes the gun, her fingers brushing his.  
  
She checks the clip, the safety, and nods as she reminds him wryly, "I've never been one to shoot you in the back, Mr. Holmes."

 

No, she wouldn't, would she? Her way of attack was that of a very charming pickpocket. To step towards him, move gracefully and swiftly, and alleviate him of everything he held secret. She would leave backstabbing to the less talented.  
  
He pauses as he turns to the motorcycle. A thought strikes him. Their assassins haven't followed yet.  
  
"Your medical record," he says, harshly. "I had it in my bag."

 

Her eyes widen ever so slightly in response, but that and a pressed thinning of her lips is all the reaction she offers. "I thought you had convinced yourself I had left because I'd been betrayed," she says noncommittally.  
  
Meanwhile, she thinks rapidly through what that file would have contained. "They have Anastasia Timoshenko's medical records," she finally says. "No physical description beyond hair and eye colour, not even a weight or height. She could be anyone."  
  
Not that Irene is willing to leave it to chance. She is already considering the wisdom of sending Moran as cleanup, once she figured out who led their pursuers. She hands him the motorcycle helmet and gestures for him to take the driver's seat.

 

He climbs onto the motorcycle. He doesn't approve of her not wearing the helmet, but he refuses to bring up her pregnancy as part of the reason why she should be wearing it. That would be insulting her and---and---the unborn thing they've produced through something as simple as conception.  
  
"Could be," he says, starting the engine. "But they'll know it's you."

 

She considers the motorcycle and climbs on after him, keeping a precise amount of space between them and wrapping her right arm loosely around his waist. Her uninjured left hand she keeps on the gun.   
  
"Do you really think I will simply trust your judgment on that point?"

 

"No, I think you'd trust your own senses," he says.  
  
He sets the motorcycle into gear. Takes a breath. And admits:  
  
"I wasn't certain where you'd gone. So I was looking for any possible evidence as to where you were. To warn you."  
  
He starts the motorcycle in motion, then. Apparently right on cue, as the roof suddenly explodes with more gunfire.

 

"Rather difficult to do, given how you seem to insist on keeping my senses from your former friends," she says. The motorcycle hums to life and her arm tightens involuntarily around his waist as it begins to move.  
  
She looks back as the roof erupts in gunfire, but they are too far away for the firearm in her hand to have any hope of reaching their pursuers. "One of them was from Sarajevo. I'm surprised you'd try the Bosnians."

 

"Recent death of one of their lieutenants, I knew it would make them edgy," he replies, easily. "John posted about the death on his blog."  
  
He hears the sound of tires screeching, and glances back to see the cars from before pursuing them.  
  
"It would have been perfect if you hadn't run!"

 

She files away the knowledge that he'd been reading John Watson's blog again. It was unexpected but hardly surprising. With Moscow so near, no doubt he was ready to slip back into life at Baker Street, and that would involve checking on John Watson.  
  
Their pursuers are, perhaps, uncreative, but they are quite efficient, and Irene tightens her grip on the gun, twisting her torso to sight along the weapon, aiming for the front left tire of the leading car. "It would have been even better if you hadn't insisted on meddling in my affairs!" she retorts over the sound of the motorcycle.

 

"You had no reason to run!" he insists. "If someone as adverse to fatherhood as I can maintain a level of decency after this, you could have at least _stayed_ to tell me!"  
  
The first spatter of gunfire from the cars. Here, there are too many people to be so afraid of the police. All Sherlock and the Woman have to fear is the ever-present mobile phone and YouTube.

 

Her answer is on the tip of her tongue when their pursuers open fire, and for a moment Irene is preoccupied, aiming low and squeezing off shots. Her first shot misses, her second sparks off the wheel of rim of the first car, and she has to turn back, tighten her grip, before she can see whether the third shot has landed true to puncture the first car's tire.  
  
She presses herself flat against his back as they weave through the street. "You're hardly one to talk," she retorts. "You ran at the very idea that John Watson would marry!"

 

Oh, of course that would be brought up again. "It was leaving for good, the end of our friendship!" he retorts. "And _I_ apologized!"  
  
He listens to the gunfire, and moves the motorcycle as best as possible to avoid the shots as they come. He can't be too reckless. One helmet. Can't be too careful. They'll be shot to death.  
  
"I wouldn't have left you!"

 

Her arm tightens around his waist as he tries to avoid the gunshots. Irene risks another look over her shoulder, and while her third bullet had hit true, the lead car seemed intent on continuing the pursuit despite one flat tire. She aimed again, this time for the other front tire.  
  
If they were anywhere else, she would refuse to have this argument. Would walk away if she had to, but there was hardly time or space for that.  
  
"I returned, didn't I?"

 

"Three days worth of morgue trips later, _yes_ ," he snaps in response. Though, really, the morgue trips were interesting, and there was only a slight stab of worry at each unveiling of a recently deceased имярек he encountered. He was mostly convinced she was alive.  
  
He glances back. "Hold on tighter," and he takes a sharp turn down an alley.  
  
"Why did you return?"

 

"Drive steadier!" she snaps back.  
  
Another three shots, and this time two shred through the front tire of the car. It is enough to bring the lead car spinning to a halt, forcing the other two to swerve around it to continue the pursuit.  
  
She refuses to tighten her grip. "Make a deduction."

 

"I thought I _was_ driving steadier," he scowls to himself.  
  
The other cars are still pursuing, so he turns, more gently this time, down another alleyway. This one is littered with teenagers and a few upturned rubbish bins lit for warmth, light, or merely dramatic ambiance. Whatever the reason, Sherlock avoids them deftly, hoping that the cars behind them can't.  
  
"It isn't me!" he shouts back to the Woman. "You didn't come back for me, you've never needed me! You're perfectly capable on your own!"

 

It shouldn't surprise her that he does not understand. She does not _want_ to understand herself, why she came back to the hotel in St. Petersburg, to the one place where she knew he would be.   
  
She takes small comfort, however, in his assurance that she's never needed him. It is a truth that with each passing day feels a little less true, that needs to be more certain the closer they are to Moscow. But to know that he thinks it is irrefutable helps her convince herself that it is true.  
  
The close quarters in the alley does make her tighten her grip on him, and Irene stows the gun momentarily, lest the passersby become alarmed. "You're the only thing I didn't leave behind in the hotel room, aren't you?" she demands.  
  
She doesn't need him, no. But she wants _this_ , this thing between them that is at once infinitely complex and painfully simple all at once. She wants it, for whatever little time they have until they part.

 

Except that doesn't make sense. She doesn't need him. She truly doesn't. He has seen what she can do on her own, and if she wants to raise a child, she'll be spectacular at it. And while he isn't one to consider himself inferior in any way, shape, or form, he knows he is secondary when it comes to her.  
  
And he should have left St. Petersburg. He should have. Why didn't he just leave?  
  
She was the only thing he had in this city that he stayed for.  
  
"I won't run a criminal organization with you," he warns.

 

That makes her laugh, but it is (for once) not a cruel laugh. "Of course not, you'd be rubbish at it," she answers, with a knowing lilt in her voice, expecting he'll be offended by the very idea that he won't excel at something.  
  
She falls silent for a moment, and against his back, she admits, "Even an international criminal organization will get boring sometimes, Mr. Holmes."

 

He nods. "And, as Jim always said, I'm on the side of the angels."  
  
But he's never been one of them. The Woman, she'll be on the side of the devils, but she won't be one of them, either. What an interesting pair they are.  
  
There's a crash, and some screaming, and Sherlock glances over his shoulder to see one of the cars has plowed through the rubbish bin, sending it and its contents flying in a burning mess.  
  
"This lot would've been excellent allies!"

 

She ducks instinctively as the car plows carelessly through the rubbish bin, sending up a spray of flaming detritus. "They are tenacious," she agrees, easing her grip on him just long enough to pull out the gun again. She's fired six bullets. How many were left in the clip? Usually 14 or 20, but there was quite a bit of uncertainty in that.  
  
"You should have stuck with jewelry as gifts," she adds, aiming again. It is more difficult in the alleyway, but there is no heat or recrimination in her voice at the comment. There might even be a hint of a tease.

 

"I can only do so much with jewelry before it gets boring," he replies.  
  
There's a spray of gunfire, and Sherlock moves the motorcycle to avoid it as best as he can.  
  
"I'd rather you weren't acting as my shield, too!"

 

It is, perhaps, a testament to how extraordinary they are that they are so much more themselves while arguing on a motorbike being shot at by angry gunmen than standing in a hotel room, refusing to acknowledge a pregnancy.  
  
"Then I suggest finding a better way of losing them," Irene answers as she pops off another three shots. This time all three go wide, though one at least manages to hit the car's windshield, a spiderweb of cracks splintering across the glass.  
  
"Besides, I'm a piss poor shield. You have four stone on me, remember?"

 

"Yes, yes," he replies. He looks ahead of them, and turns another corner, sharply.  
  
"There's a bay not far from here," he suggests. "We'll drive the motorcycle over the edge, leap off, and stay under the edge of the bay. They'll believe we've drowned, until we can resurface, metaphorically, later."  
  
At the sharp turn, the car with the splintering windshield hits the side of a building, but reverses and continues to pursue.

 

Irene Adler of four days ago would have agreed. Irene Adler of four days ago would have thought he was utterly mad, but she would agree, because it was the quickest way to evade their pursuers.  
  
"Have you forgotten that I'm preg--"  
  
The word catches in her throat again. No, she refuses to let this change her. Refuses to let it redefine her as something other than Irene Adler. She swallows back her protest.   
  
" _Fine._ "

 


	5. Unchanged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Racing through Saint Petersburg with six assassins on their trail seeking reparation for a broken promise, Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler struggle to remain themselves in the face of the knowledge that everything has changed.

He wants to hear _fine._ Sherlock Holmes of four days ago would have blocked everything out and only heard her agreeing with him, because that is what he wanted to hear. Sherlock Holmes of four days ago would know how to delete things he didn't want to know.  
  
But the Woman is pregnant. The possibility of disloding the cells growing within her would be high for something so physical. And she was still agreeing. Still trying to be herself.  
  
He hears himself lying to her. "I have a better idea."

 

He's lying. It's obvious in his voice, obvious in his words. But then she had been as well, and she has no illusion that he had not heard the lie in her answer.  
  
"You're a terrible liar," she says. Because she cannot let him lie without telling him she knows it, even if she risks him point to her own lies.  
  
She nods ahead. "Abandon the motorcycle. We can lose them in the crowds."

 

He wants to point out that, to other people, he is an excellent liar. It's just to her that he isn't. She knows him better than he'd like, she sees more. And he doesn't have a plan, apart from 'flee'.  
  
Abandoning the motorcycle is an excellent idea, but they need a crowd, and an opportunity.  
  
He sees a park nearby. A park, and the chance to leave the motorcycle by a group of other ones. They'll know they're in the park, but it will be more difficult to find them.  
  
"Get ready."

 

The minute tilt of his head tells her what direction he is looking, and her gaze falls on the park and the motorbikes parked nearby. She nods in approval, belatedly realizing he cannot see her, and tucks the gun away, wincing as the still-hot metal of the muzzle brushes skin.   
  
"Just try to keep up," she answers, easing her grip around his waist, the better to leap off the motorcycle in a hurry.

 

"You watch your leg," he replies.  
  
He slows the motorcycle, just slow enough for jumping. Aims it at the empty place among the others. Three---two---one---  
  
"Now."  
  
He moves swiftly, lifting his leg to leap off, allowing the motorcycle to take itself to its new parking spot.

 

If she had had the time, she would have told him her leg was fine and his concern was unnecessary. As it is, she simply moves with him, throwing her leg over the motorcycle and jumping off with little more than a stumble as she lands.  
  
The impact of the landing sends a shiver up her leg, but her ankles hold, and she straightens, shoulders squared, lips thinned as her eyes sweep the park. A group of grade school girls playing jump rope to their left, old men playing chess below sprawling trees to their right. A sign proclaims a botanical garden of some sort ahead, and Irene nods towards it, snatching a bag off a neighboring bike as she does so.  
  
"That way."

 

He doesn't hesitate to follow her. He can hear the cars coming, the crunching grinding of an injured front end, weapons moving around the boot. They don't have much time.  
  
He moves swiftly, putting an arm around her waist. It's not to be close or affectionate, it's to ensure that they look together, like a couple on a stroll. It's a long-shot option to stay more hidden. Or so he tells himself.  
  
"They're not so likely to be worried about bystanders," he warns.

 

She quickens her steps, knowing he will match hers. "They may not be worried about bystanders, but people are rather concerned when there are men with guns around schoolchildren," she answers, nodding towards the men playing chess. "None of them will put up a very long fight but they will at least alert the authorities if anything happens near those girls."  
  
She leaves his arm around her waist, and shifts the bag she liberated in front of her, opening it to rifle through the contents. "Worker at the gardens," she says, "Must be planning an evening out after work with a change of clothes."

 

"A date he's been anticipating for the last six weeks, he'll be sorely disappointed to find out she's gay," Sherlock responds, barely looking into the bag. "We can get you into that shirt and trousers. They're looking for a man and Woman, not two men."  
  
He looks over his shoulder. He can hear the car pull up towards the gardens, but they're far enough away that he can't immediately see it.

 

Her lips quirk into a smile at his answer. Running from a mob of angry Bosnian criminals was hardly the time to be showing off, but neither of them can resist. It is, after all, what makes them who they are.  
  
She nods, considers the clothing within, and switches their trajectory towards the visitor's center, and the washrooms within. Without hesitation, she pulls him with her into a stall in the men's room. In the close quarters, she shoves the bag into his arms as she sheds trousers and blouse.  
  
"How fortunate that his tastes include fedoras," she says. The pearl necklace goes around her throat, this time loosely, easily hidden beneath a popped collar, and she gestures to him for the shirt. "It's a better option than an impromptu haircut."

 

"It's a trilby," Sherlock corrects her. He offers her the shirt. "An easy mistake."  
  
She sheds her trousers and blouse, and he's aware of their close quarters far more than he is of their nudity. He reaches out to touch her chest, fingertips just above her nipples before she covers them. Sensitive, swollen slightly. All of the obvious signs.  
  
"I should have deduced it," he says.

 

Her breath hitches involuntarily at the light touch of his fingertips against her skin; there is nothing deliberately sexual about the touch, but there is a tenuous intimacy in it, in the knowledge associated with it.  
  
"As if I shouldn't have?" she answers with a wry smile as she slips on the purloined shirt and begins buttoning it up. It is loose on her frame, but that served to hide the unmistakably feminine curves of her breasts and hips. "I know my body far better than you, not that you haven't tried to catch up."  
  
She should have known, should have recognized the signs, but she had been preoccupied. He was, after all, an excellent, intoxicating distraction.

 

He has absolutely no reason to kiss her right now. None. They are in close quarters, yes, but also in danger. And a sudden wrench has been thrown into her plans (and brilliantly avoided, now that he thinks about it. She's rebuilt the machine around the wrench in only a few days' time.).   
  
Yet, he raises his hand up to cup her face and leans in to kiss her. Because---well, it is the only thing he wants to do at this exact moment.

 

It is not often that Irene Adler meets Sherlock Holmes halfway. But his hand cups her face and Irene leans in to meet him. Tension does not leech out of her at the touch, because for it to would mean that she has relaxed and she has not, they are still in danger, there are still things to be very concerned about, but Irene imagines she tastes relief on her own tongue as she coaxes his lips apart.  
  
Because they still draw each other like moths to mutual flame, that while the spark may have caught between them, they were still very much themselves, that Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler would not change despite the thing that was their sentiment writ large.  
  
Her arm wraps around his neck, and she pulls him closer for a long moment before drawing back to herself, before taking a single step back from the feel of his lips on hers in their cramped quarters.

 

She is his dangerous disadvantage.  
  
She pulls away, and he finds himself struggling to do the same. Moscow was supposed to be the end, the real end, but it isn't. Every holiday, every communication, he'll cling to them, the way he saved her every text message. This won't be over, and he won't mind. That, he supposes, is a sign of exactly what they mean to each other.  
  
He moves his hand down to hers and curls his fingers around hers.  
  
"Ready?"

 

She cinches the stolen trousers tighter around her waist, ensuring they will not fall low if they have to run, and tucks her hair under the trilby hat, arranging it so that at least some of her hair obscures her face.  
  
She nods, and her fingers twine with his. She does not think about how comforting it is to have his hand in hers, the weight of the ring on her finger again.  
  
"Your Bosnians. Will they resort to blackmail if they figure out whose medical file you had in your possession?"

 

"Blackmail, no," he replies. "But they may attempt to smear your name. Or make the child a target."  
  
He doesn't know everything about them, but he thinks he knows what they like. They like to hurt others. Hurt others, and be in control.

 

"I doubt they're creative enough to attempt to smear my name with anything even remotely scandalous _and_ untrue." The walkway by the mens room is clear, and no one appears to notice them emerging. Irene's eyes sweep the walkways of the botanical garden. In the distance she can still hear the sound of the schoolgirls as they chant some nursery rhyme in time to the beats of the rope.  
  
Her lips thin, however, and the set of her jaw is determined as she continues, "If they think they can use anything of mine against me, they are sorely mistaken."

 

Sherlock feels the same way. Although he has no real fatherly feelings, he knows that he won't let harm come to the Woman, or to whomever matters to her. This thing they have created together is part of that, as is anyone attached to it. And...well, it would be something they created.  
  
An odd sensation, the knowledge that a person would be something he and the Woman created.  
  
"Do you trust Sibyl Vane?" he asks, his tone as casual as if he were asking about the weather. "She could be a potential weak point if they attempt to antagonize you."

 

Irene waves her braced right hand dismissively. "I might as well ask if you trust John Watson," she answers, her tone just as casual. "Sibyl likes adventure, for all that she conducts symphonies. It's why she dealt art forgeries on the side. I trust what she likes, and I have other forms of security to ensure she's loyal."  
  
The fact that she likes the woman who called herself Sibyl Vane, well, that helped too. But Irene was a realist, and she knew that the knowledge of Sibyl's real name, her real identity beside that of dubious art dealer, will keep the woman by her side as much as her affections.

 

"Good," Sherlock replies. If Sibyl Vane crosses the Woman, he imagines there will be very little of her left behind. The Woman takes her likes seriously, and that is something Sherlock appreciates.  
  
He runs a hand over his hair, mussing it up further, and twists it a little to the opposite side. It isn't much of a disguise, but it is something. He releases the Woman's hand and turns his coat inside out, the red lining suddenly becoming the color one sees when they look at him.

 

She does not have to see them in a mirror to know how unprepared they were for this. The inside-out coat, the ill fitting clothes and the hasty disguises. Either of them would see through it in a heartbeat.  
  
Luckily, their pursuers were not them.   
  
She sees movement out of the corner of her eye, a man moving between the trees on a path to her left, hidden by vegetation, and Irene stops walking, giving Sherlock a questioning look as she nods to it, her hand moving to the gun.

 

He turns his head away.  
  
" _Let him get closer,_ " he says, switching to Russian to keep from standing out. " _You have the advantage._ "  
  
This, he realizes, is also about trust. She has the weapon again, and his back is to the man who may be their pursuer.  
  
He isn't afraid.

 

She nods, focused more on their surroundings for the moment than on figuring out the words in Russian to answer. She counts footsteps, and confirms that the man on the other path is momentarily alone, but a gunshot would bring the others.  
  
A few more steps. " _As soon as I fire the others will come running. I'll give you your weapon back and run for his,_ " she tells him. There is an implicit trust there, she knows. That she trusts him to watch her back.

 

" _Yes,_ " he replies.  
  
He looks down at her. Killing them would keep them off of their back. To make the medical file disappear forever.  
  
It will be worth it.  
  
"I'm ready."

 

He is on the side of the angels, but the fact that he simply responds to the idea of killing six men with a 'yes' says far too much about how they have tangled themselves in each other. But the file _will_ disappear, and Irene feels a certain visceral satisfaction in the idea that it will not be Moran who does the deed.  
  
She glances over at the man across the path again and gives Sherlock a brief, fierce smile before she raises the gun and shoots, three shots.   
  
The man falls like a tree even as the gunshots echo through the garden. Without another word, she shoves the gun at him and runs for the man now dead on the other path.

 

He turns and raises the gun, firing just as another man comes down the path. He aims for center body mass and hits his target easily, downing him, as well. He steps slowly after the Woman, gun up.  
  
Two down. Four to go.  
  
There's a scream from the garden. Someone heard the gunshots. He turns to find it, only to feel an arm go around his throat from behind, getting him in a choke hold.

 

Irene hears gunshots as she reaches the dead man, but they are close enough and the thump of a body hitting the ground is far enough away that she is fairly certain it is Sherlock's doing. She relieves the now-dead man of his firearm and gets back to her feet, just in time to see a third assailant grab Sherlock from behind.  
  
She curses mentally and ducks back into the cover of the foliage, watching from between branches as she considers her possible moves. The hired gun is too close for a clean shot, but if she could get the other man to loosen his grip...  
  
Irene schools her voice to a low, distracted calm. Focused on something else, expecting her partner to be covering for her. "Take the left, Sherlock," she says, trusting he would recognize that she rarely called him by his given name, and that it was a ploy for the gunman's benefit, "I'll come at our friends from the right, understood?"

 

He hears her words, even as the air is choked from his throat. He feels his assailants' grip loosening, out of surprise at an unseen third party member, of course.  
  
The Woman never called him 'Sherlock', no more than he called her 'Irene'.  
  
He grips the man by the shoulder and pulls, bending over as he does so. The assailant falls forward, rolling over Sherlock's back and landing hard on the ground. There is no time for hesitation. Sherlock dives for his own gun.

 

The sound of a body hitting the ground, the impact hard enough to knock breath from lungs. It's enough for Irene to rise from her position concealed behind the garden's brush, her newly liberated gun in hand. "I'd suggest getting out of arm's reach of our friend, Mr. Holmes," she says crisply, finger on the trigger. She directs her next words to the man on the ground.   
  
"And I wouldn't move if I were you, dear. Not unless you enjoy the sensation of your kneecaps shattering."  
  
She knows the other three will come running soon enough, but two against three (four, if they counted the soon-to-be-dead man on the ground) were far better odds.

 

The man on the ground stays still, and Sherlock retrieves his weapon. He points it at the man's head. Only a few short months ago, he was able to shoot a politician he didn't know through the brain without a second thought. But this man, prone on the ground, is helpless and it---it feels wrong. It's almost as though he can hear John Watson's voice, telling him that it's wrong to shoot an unarmed man.  
  
He doesn't have to consider it long. Behind the Woman, there's a man about twenty feet back, gun out. Sherlock raises his weapon.  
  
"Fall left!" he calls, firing.

 

The fact that she doesn't question him, that she immediately drops low and rolls to the left, it should mean something. It should concern her. But it doesn't, because this is how they _work_. She doesn't think of it as trust. Not at the moment, not when she hears the shot and feels the rustle of air as something (someone?) falls.  
  
There is a break in the brush and she ducks through it, reaching the prone man, whose eyes are calculating as he looks at Sherlock, whose attention is elsewhere. He reaches out, as if to get back to his feet, and at the same moment Irene reaches him, planting one foot on his chest, pushing him back down.  
  
"I told you not to move, pet," she tsks. Without waiting for the man to react, she shoots him twice, right between the eyes.  
  
She is less than bothered by the execution.

 

Watching the Woman execute someone doesn't bother him. John Watson's voice doesn't appear behind his shoulder, telling him what he should and should not do. No, the Woman is her own person. Her decisions are valid.  
  
Four down. Two left.  
  
"Our military man hasn't shown," Sherlock says.

 

The man dies, one moment his eyes wide with fear, the next staring blankly upward. Irene looks down at him with little expression on her face, removes her foot from his chest, and looks over at Sherlock. She breathes heavier from the exertion, but her eyes are sharp, her expression calculating as she looks around.   
  
"He's staying back, assessing the risks," she says. Their activities have no doubt alerted the other denizens of the park, which meant they had to draw their last two assailants to them quickly, or risk them hanging back out of the way of the law enforcement that was sure to descend.  
  
Irene nods back to the trails leading back into the trees as she leans down to relieve the dead man at her feet of his firearm. "We're too exposed here. We should head into the trails."

 

He steps over to the body and rummages through the pockets. More signs of the man's former life appear on him. Vegetable lover, prunes roses, likes dogs. He ignores these signs and pulls the mobile from his pocket.  
  
"Communication," he says. "They're not responding to me anymore."

 

"Are you disappointed?" she asks dryly. He kneels to rummage through their pockets, and Irene stands firm, one gun in each hand, fingers on triggers as she holds them steady. She scans the park around them again as a steady itch begins to grown between her shoulders.   
  
"If you're suggesting I contact them, I'd still insist we be under cover before I do."

 

He looks up at her, his eyebrows knitted together in extreme confusion. He looks down at the weapons, then back up to her in her outfit. The look of confusion grows.

 

She arches an eyebrow in response to his look of confusion, and if that steady itch hadn't been niggling between her shoulder blades, Irene would have laughed. Instead, she moves her finger off the trigger and offers him the weapon in her right hand.  
  
"Stunned into speechlessness again, Mr. Holmes?" she asks. "I'm flattered."

 

"I don't think I should find the image of you with two guns dressed as a man so---" He reaches up to take her hand. "--- _sexy._ "  
  
Odd, how physical attraction works.

 

Her surprise at his response shows momentarily on her face, and Irene _does_ laugh then, allowing him to take her hand, twining her fingers with his as best she could despite the firearm and the brace holding her reset finger in place.  
  
She takes steps towards the trails, pulling him with her. "Perhaps you shouldn't be surprised," she informs him. "I told you once, brainy's the new sexy."

 

"Very little has been the old sexy, for me," he admits. He feels very stupid, saying something like this, because it's very obvious and unnecessary. He prefers to eliminate unnecessary speech.  
  
He turns, slightly, in order to tell her this, when he hears a slight pop, and feels something sharp on his cheek. A bullet buries itself in the tree behind him, adjacent to where his head had just been.  
  
He looks at the hole for half a second. That's the second near miss in as many months. He really, rather desperately, needs to work on watching his flank.

 

She has a retort on her lips, to remind him that he has been a very thorough study in the past months, but then there is the pop, the graze against his cheek, the bullet buried in the tree.  
  
It is not the pop of a silenced gun that she recognizes, but the razor thin line across his cheek, the graze that draws a drop of blood, and Irene's grip on his hand is immediately less playful, suddenly forceful as she pulls him back behind her. "Call your former colleagues," she snaps, cold fury crawling like frost into her voice, her arm up as she sights along the gun in the direction of the bullet. "And give me the mobile."

 

He punches in the number without thought, and then freezes as he begins offering her the phone.  
  
"You're not going to become Mycroft, saving me from myself, are you?"  
  
He moves again, and another pop goes off. This time, there is no tree for the bullet to hit, but it flies onward, and there's a scream as it hits an elderly woman.

 

She takes the phone from him and returns fire, squeezing off two shots. "Are you trying to protect me from myself when you do the same?" she retorts.   
  
In her mind, it is simple. As simple as her reaction to Moran's ill thought out gunshot in London. The game they play, the death and destruction that come about because of it, it is _theirs_. And she does not take lightly to attempted intrusion.  
  
The mobile rings. She waits. "This game is ours, Mr. Holmes, and I don't share."

 

He smirks, despite himself.  
  
"I could never protect you from yourself," he replies. "Nor do I really think I would want to."  
  
Blood slides down his cheek, but he pays it no real heed. The injury is superficial, nothing like the gunshot in London.  
  
He tugs the hat off of the Woman's head and holds it aloft, waiting for the gunshot.

 

She smiles, razor-sharp and pleased, at his answer, as her hair tumbles down her back, a stray strand tugged by the breeze. Almost immediately, the ringing phone picks up.  
  
"Firing a handgun then, are we, pet?" she says, her words cold and crisp without waiting for a greeting from the other end. Even as she speaks, Irene's eyes sweep the area, narrowing her search area based on the new information. "If you'd been using a sniper rifle, your scope would have told you who I was well before now, but you waited until you could see my hair to shoot. I suggest you and your last friend standing come for that talk your employers so desperately wanted before the authorities arrive for that old woman you just shot."  
  
Her eyes narrow, and she she aims carefully into the bushes, squeezing off three shots. There is a rustle in the bushes, and she adds, "Five minutes pet. And you won't get far with that leg wound."  
  
Without waiting for an answer, she disconnects the call and tosses Sherlock the mobile.

 

He catches it one-handed.  
  
"Are you actually planning on negotiating, or are we going to shoot them the moment they come into view?"

 

Her eyes linger on the drop of blood against his cheek, and while she knows it is a superficial wound, far far less than anything else either of them has sustained in the last few months, Irene still has to resist the urge to reach out to brush it away. Not now. She couldn't afford to be sentimental _now_.  
  
Not yet. She forces herself to look away, to meet his eye with that same cold smile. "What do you _think_?"

 

"I think you have a reputation to protect," he says, not breaking his gaze with hers. "But I don't think they realize how important that is to you."  
  
Keeping his eyes on hers, he uses his thumb to pull back the safety as he waits for the sound of footsteps.  
  
Police sirens blare. They'll be arriving any moment. He doesn't feel the need to run, not right now.

 

Her eyes remain locked with his, even as she keeps an ear out for the telltale sound of footsteps, for the limp that at least one of the two will be sporting. She does lower her arm, in the most paltry attempt to follow through on the promise of negotiation.  
  
"I'm not the only one with a reputation to protect," she reminds him. "The fewer people who know, the less likely the British Government will hear of it."

 

Mycroft will work it out eventually. He always does. But for right now, this is theirs. Their holiday, their child, their secret. It's theirs, and he likes that. By the time Mycroft works it out, she'll be protected, in control and, most importantly, free.  
  
He hears the telltale sound of a limp. Four feet walking in their direction.  
  
He keeps his eyes locked to hers.

 

The footsteps are quiet enough to not be too close in their approach, but certainly close enough to bullet range. No snapping of branches, scuffling among fallen leaves. They're coming at them in open air. Good.  
  
Irene does not turn to look, her gaze on him, and she quirks an eyebrow ever so slightly in question as she murmurs, "On three?"

 

" _Un,_ " he replies with a slight nod. He doesn't look at them, keeps his gaze on her. He listens to the soft footstep. The softer step is the military man, used to walking in heavier boots.  
  
" _Deux_ ," he says.  
  
The other step is a man with a horse he cares a lot for and a wife who waits up for him at night. The sound of his right step shows someone who recently went to the trouble to repair a broken sole with home equipment.  
  
He thinks John Watson would hesitate knowing this. Sherlock will not.  
  
" _Trois._ "

 


	6. Bloodstains and Lovers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With two assassins left on their tail and the spectre of Mycroft Holmes looming, Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes must carve a path through the tangled web Jim Moriarty left behind, and the brambles of their own growing sentiment.

She's content to let him count. He is, after all, following her lead and that is enough.  
  
On three, she raises the gun again and shoots without warning. She aims first for the uninjured man, about waist high. The head was too risky without looking, as was the heart. The abdomen though, that was easy, and would ensure pain and a long slow death.  
  
Three shots, and Irene moves just enough to do the same to the second, injured man. Only then does she break the gaze they're locked in. Only then does Irene Adler turn to look.

 

He aims as well, going for the injured man. She aims low on the uninjured man, so he aims lower. Aiming for the other knee. Calculate sound of footstep and height of knee. The man drops halfway, the Woman's bullet pierces his brain.  
  
The first man...can bleed out. He doesn't need Sherlock's mercy.  
  
He doesn't turn to look when she does. He keeps his eyes on her, on the sharpness of her profile. Pale and severe in the drabness of Russia. She's beautiful.  
  
"We should leave," he suggests.

 

The now-dead man does not hold her interest; he is about as relevant now as the rock next to his bloodied brains. The dying man, on the other hand, she studies him, considers the way he clutches at his gut, at the blood spilling out from between his fingers. The placement of the wounds tell her he will be going into septic shock shortly. Between that and the blood loss, she doubts he'd live much longer.  
  
And whatever that length is in pain is fitting.  
  
She turns back to Sherlock at his suggestion, and only then does Irene indulge, reaching up with her right hand to brush the blood from his cheek. "To their cars," she agrees. "If they still have the file, I want it before the police arrive and search the cars."

 

He tilts his head as her hand goes up. It stings, the pressure of her hand against his minor injury, but he doesn't wince. He thinks about the fact that this round of people chasing them has ceased, and they might be able to find somewhere to rest. To indulge.  
  
There is, after all, not much time left in this holiday.  
  
"You won't get away," the man on the ground chokes out in broken English. "Your insult is far greater than you know."

 

The man's broken threat intrudes on the little respite Irene has allowed herself, and the irritation she feels in response is, perhaps, far more than a dying thug deserves. Still, it pulls her away from Sherlock, away from what little holiday they have until Moscow. She tsks as she lowers her hand, as her expression grows cold again as she turns to the dying man.  
  
"Tsk tsk, pet," she says as she takes a step back from Sherlock, as she moves towards the man. "If you'd simply stayed here and whimpered, you'd have had a few more minutes to live." She rests her foot carefully on his abdomen, not on the bleeding wound but close, and applies steady pressure, knowing it is encouraging blood flow, encouraging pain. Irene leans down, her smile sharp as she rests the muzzle of the gun, still warm, against the man's chest.   
  
"Mr. Holmes, would you care to inform your former associate that I'm not interested in his last words, or should I?"

 

The man chokes rather than cries out. His face is tight, as though he's trying to hold something in he thinks they want to know. He thinks he's being tortured.  
  
"We don't want any information you have," Sherlock says, simply. "Your lot were a misplaced gift at the wrong time. And that's all your death is."  
  
He makes a sarcastic face. "Sorry."

 

The dying man's eyes are wide as he digests the words, as realization dawns and he stares up at Irene, at the almost bored look on her face as she meets his eye and calmly fires another shot, straight to his chest this time.  
  
She straightens, another dead body, another thing of little interest, and turns her attention back to Sherlock, a smug smile on her lips as she studies him, her eyes slowly dilating as the sweep over him. "So this _was_ meant as a gift," she purrs.

 

He shifts, only slightly awkward under her gaze.  
  
He doesn't do gifts. He doesn't find generosity necessary, and therefore doesn't consider it essential. But, in this case, it seemed...well, it was an even better idea than the necklace.  
  
"I wanted to give it to you as a parting gift," he says, with no small amount of sentiment. "That's what people do for their lovers, isn't it? Give them a parting gift?"

 

She knows they should leave, should sweep the now-dead men's vehicles for the medical file, then leave the scene before the police arrived. Create better disguises, indulge. Enjoy St. Petersburg before Moscow calls.  
  
"Are you so eager to see me gone, Mr. Holmes?" she asks, stepping close.

 

His lips twitch into a smirk. Just a small one.  
  
"I think we both know that isn't true."  
  
The sirens are close, now. The police vehicles in Russia have cameras attached to them, and Sherlock knows that if word of this gets to Mycroft, he will find them on the surveillance.  
  
And right now, he wants the one thing that Mycroft won't give them: Time. He wants time with the Woman. Just enough time.  
  
He extends his hand towards hers.  
  
"Have dinner with me?"

 

She takes his hand, fingers curling around his. "I should simply not respond," she tells him as she takes his hand, her fingers curling around his. The police will be here soon, but they'll be more interested in the bodies than the cars, at least for a few minutes.  
  
Enough time to get the file. She begins moving, trusting him to follow. It would take mere moments to liberate that particular loose end.  
  
"But then I don't have months to let you stew, now do I?"

 

Of course he follows. There isn't anywhere else he'd rather go.  
  
"Between now and our next holiday, I imagine there will be some... _stewing._ " Potentially messages, or codes, things left to taunt the other. He'll be easy to find. Her...not so much.  
  
Wait.  
  
"I didn't _stew_ ," he says, with mild indignation.

 

She laughs, low and delighted, at his indignant response, and tucks the gun into her waistband again, allowing the folds of the stolen shirt hide it from view as she leads him out of the garden, towards the parking lot, where the grade school children are cowering with a few of the old chess players standing guard.   
  
"Didn't you?" she asks, all false, teasing innocence. "Or did you know precisely what you wanted to respond with, and simply waited until New Year's?"

 

"It was---" No, he doesn't have the right answer for this one. He always has to have the last word, though. Perhaps this time, he won't. Perhaps this time, he'll let her win.  
  
But then again, maybe not. "Not the right time for it."

 

"You still didn't have the last word then," she reminds him as she approaches the car with the spider-webbed windshield. The door is, unsurprisingly, unlocked. She throws open the passenger side door, but there is little in the car. A half-finished cup of coffee (cream, no sugar, for the dead man who had been previously worried about a potential diabetic condition), the glint of spent shell casings.  
  
"'Goodbye, Mr. Holmes.'"

 

"Couldn't have given my brother the knowledge that I'd been there," he says.  
  
He tilts his head to glance in the back of the car. No sign of the file. It might've been in one of the other cars, or it might've been left behind.  
  
"And I knew you would be listening." What he didn't know was who she would be texting when she gave her last request.

 

Another chuckle.   
  
"Who did you think I was texting that night?" she asks, moving to the undamaged car. This one is locked, but the pistol makes quick work of the driver's side window, and Irene unlocks the door with brisk efficiency.  
  
The file is propped between the driver's seat and the console. She reaches inside, heedless of the jagged, shattered glass, and liberates it.

 

Sherlock reaches into the glove compartment of the first car---smoker, cigars, usually while driving in order to focus---and procures a lighter. He steps over to the Woman and sets the lighter aflame, allowing her to choose to burn the file or save it.  
  
"Where did you think I would be when I received it?" he retorts.

 

This is how they are best. How she _likes_ them best. Dancing around the questions neither of them will answer, the sentiment neither of them will admit, but still pushing, playing the game of oneupsmanship as if either of them will slip.  
  
She opens the file and removes the piece of paper that had the test results on them, considers the words typed out in black and white, the thing that has made their sentiment inescapable, physical. She feeds it to the lighter's flames, watching the fire consume the words, if not the _thing_ itself.  
  
"I won't text you," she says. "Not when it's time." It would be far too dangerous. Far too ordinary. Far too unlike them.

 

The way his eyebrows knit together shows that he never expected her to. He knows her. He knows she'll find the right doctors and take care of herself. The only way he'd get a text is if he was to expect the thing since its mother had died.  
  
"Don't name it Hamish," he says. "It really is an awful name."

 

She relaxes almost imperceptibly at his look of mild confusion. He doesn't expect her to. The flames lick their way up the page, the test results turning black, curling into soot. She drops the page then, lets it finish curling in on itself on the ground.  
  
Nothing between them has changed.   
  
She is glad for it, though she refuses to admit it.  
  
"Of course not," she scoffs, stepping on the ashes to stifle the last of the flames, to kick apart the soot. The sirens are louder now, and she nods towards the city center, heading for the gates to the park. A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth as she begins walking, "Perhaps I'll name it after Moran."

 

He wonders how much _will_ change. At what point will she appear at the doorstep of 221b, and he and John will have to babysit the thing while she runs off on an errand? Will he be expected to do paternal things? Will he _want_ to do paternal things? There is a chemical change in the body due to empathic changes based on pregnancy (he read this once during a case). Will that change him?  
  
"Moran lost," Sherlock reminds her. "At least pick the name of a man who made some sort of an impact before failure."  
  
Police run past them. Why would they stop them, of course? Just a lovely couple, walking towards the gates.

 

That earns him a sharp look. "I am _not_ naming the thing after Jim Moriarty."  
  
The police run past them, and though they are not stopped, Irene does quicken her pace after the police pass, lest some idiotic officer decides that an innocuous couple walking out of a park after gunshots had been reported is, in fact, suspicious.  
  
She considers their holiday. They have missed their flight to Moscow by now. It is simple enough to catch the next one, but Moscow is the end, and with it so close, she wants to indulge. "One last disguise, Mr. Holmes," she murmurs, leaning towards him, "Before Irene Adler returns from the dead. What shall it be?"

 

"In his own way, Jim's influence is responsible for its existence."  
  
He lifts her hand, looking down at the ring on the ring finger there. Bright, ostentatious, and part of them since the beginning.  
  
He has so many options. So many roles they could play right now. One last game, one last night before they go to Moscow. Before it's over, and their future will be littered only with the occasional holiday, the game they've played so slowly and luxuriously here compressed into small pockets of time.  
  
"I want Irene Adler," he says, before he can properly stop himself.

 

His answer is not what she expects. There is a ring of impulsiveness in it, a rush to the words that tells her they are unexpected, uncaught, and for all that, utterly true. She pauses on the street corner, ostensibly to check for traffic, but it allows her to turn to him, to study him as she sways against him, her hip against his side, the soft swell of her breasts hidden by the stolen shirt almost brushing him.  
  
"The dominatrix or the Woman?" she counters, arching an eyebrow in curious challenge.

 

"There's a difference?" he teases. Or perhaps it isn't teasing. Perhaps he's stopped seeing that much of a difference. The dominatrix who now controls Jim's web, and the Woman he has far too much sentiment for who is carrying the bundle of cells in her body that will one day be their child.  
  
He often sees things in black and white. True and untrue. Perhaps she will be his first acceptance of grey.  
  
Police sirens roar around them. The first winds of a Russian autumn toss his hair and hers. Sherlock Holmes leans down to kiss the Woman. Just the once, here. A pause in their short window of time remaining. An indulgence in sentiment.

 

The dominatrix sits upon Jim Moriarty's old throne, who is implacable and unreadable, who is cold and ruthless. The Woman is... not softer, she will never be _soft_ in that way. But the Woman is allowed her moments of sentiment, the Woman allows herself to indulge in kissing Sherlock Holmes on the corner of a St. Petersburg street, as the Russian wind tugs at them.  
  
She kisses him back, and her fingers curl into the sleeve of his shirt, as she savours the momentary indulgence. "Six dead hit men," she murmurs, opening eyes she had not known had fluttered closed. "They'll watch the airports out of St. Petersburg today. And I'm hardly dressed to be inconspicuous. Can Moscow wait another night, Mr. Holmes?"  
  
She is asking, not because she needs permission, or even his agreement. She simply wants to hear him say it. Wants him to admit that he wants to linger and indulge as much as she does. At least, for a little while, for a time with an end.

 

"Yes."  
  
Another word that came out of his mouth without his permission. Another admission, courtesy of the Woman. The Woman and sentiment.  
  
But they can wait. They will wait. A hotel, anywhere. Just...one more day for this holiday. Once more for the road, as it were. The six dead hit men and the likelihood that the airport would be on observation were excuses, even for her. And they were excuses that were worth it.  
  
He nods to the street behind them.  
  
"Pick a direction."

 

Her lips curve into a pleased smile, still every bit Irene Adler but softer than the dominatrix's smile. "Good."  
  
She looks around them and sees the bulbous onion domes of an ornate church rising to the east. There is no reason to choose that direction, other than that she likes the sumptuous look of the domes, because it is a view that she will enjoy, because this was an evening for revels and she was going to properly indulge. She nods towards the east and begins walking. "That way."  
  
If she recalls correctly, the Grand Hotel Europe is in that direction.

 

Sherlock has no real knowledge of St. Petersburg. He knows what he saw as they drove, and he knows what he'd researched while hunting for the Woman. Most of it is irrelevant and he will spend most of the night deleting it. The bulbous domes ahead of them mean nothing to him, apart from their aesthetic qualities. He has no real desire for the evening, nothing apart from holding onto a time he knows he's going to miss.  
  
He imagines he should have a desire, something he wants to do. He thinks that around another person, he might try to invent a desire in order to placate them, but he doesn't have to with the Woman. She is like John in that; he doesn't have to pretend to feel around her. He simply does.  
  
In the last few hours, they have divulged both dishonesty and pregnancy, and killed six people between them. And now, they're walking about as though they're on holiday. He asked her once, what seems a long time ago, if there was something wrong with them.  
  
"Do you imagine whatever is wrong with us will be wrong with him, too?"

 

She slips her hand into his, and despite her unconventional dress, the gun tucked at the small of her back, they could be on holiday, with such a stroll. And so it takes a moment for Irene to understand his question, to recognize the 'him' to which he is referring.   
  
"She can't be anything but extraordinary," she answers; she cannot think of it as anything more than The Inconvenience, but she is contrary, and if he insists it is a boy, well... who was she to agree?   
  
There is a row of shops ahead, local designers but quite chic, and she draws him with her towards one of them in no particular order. "The world has had plenty of warning. If she wreaks havoc on it, it's hardly _her_ fault."

 

He finds himself smirking. Of course the Woman would be contrary. He only hopes whatever the bundle of cells they've produced becomes is at least half her in ability as well as chromosomes.  
  
Her hand is warm in his and it doesn't feel wrong. They're not playing at simple affection, at least he isn't. He wants to touch her, to have his hand in hers.  
  
"Perhaps he will become a detective," he says. "I'll retire, John and I can move to a cottage with beehives."

 

She makes a face of distaste, though even she is uncertain whether that is due to the idea of The Inconvenience as a detective or his retirement. "Don't rush ahead of yourself, Mr. Holmes," she reminds him, drawing him into the shop with her.   
  
The shop girl is bored, an engineering student with a part time job who indulged in robotics with a friend whose unrequited crush on the shop girl was obvious to Irene even twice removed. The girl looks up, smiles politely, and indicates the dressing rooms are just over there, feel free to browse, and returns to her wire diagrams. "If you plan your retirement now, I may suspect you're getting rusty," she purrs as she slips his arm around her waist, freeing her uninjured hand to pull a few dresses from the racks.

 

"What with my current luck with gunshots, I'm likely to be dead within the next year," he says, mostly flippantly. He has a good doctor, he tells himself. Any seriously damaging gunshot wounds, well, John can fix them.  
  
He keeps his arm around her waist, but reaches over to a dark purple men's shirt hanging nearby. How many days since he last changed? He's probably past due. This is so...oddly domestic, despite the conversation and the gun he feels against the small of her back, and the situation.  
  
"But I did always enjoy reading about bees."

 

"I've spent far too much effort keeping you alive to accept _that_ ," she answers, just as flippantly. A dress catches her eye, one cut close to the body, made of bottle green velvet that ended below the knee. She picks it up, along with a dress in deep, midnight blue, the same colour as the evening gown she had worn in Kotor.  
  
She gives him a look over her shoulder, and there is a thread of truth in her light words. "Bees are orderly, patterned," she muses. "I expect you think I prefer snakes."

 

"Bees are far more than just the source of themselves. Just a body for the hive." He feels this way about his own body sometimes. A moving piece for his brain. He doesn't say that. It seems juvenile.  
  
" _Cuculus canorus_ ," he says. "Brood parasites. Knock the weaker offspring out of the nest, make the parasited parent give up its own parental success in order to thrive. Neater, especially for someone who nearly brought a nation to its knees at the expense of two brothers. And certainly far more interesting than snakes." He says the last without any sarcasm or irony, but more with something akin to admiration.

 

_That_ makes her laugh, the sound rising throaty and full of pleasure from deep in her throat. It's enough to make her stop in her browsing of the racks to turn back to him, to press her mouth to his in a slow, heated kiss before she pulls away again to sweep into one of the dressing rooms.   
  
"Mmm I do like it when you're flattering."  
  
Only she would think of it as flattery, but on the other hand she has no doubt he meant it as such.

 

He especially likes it when she finds the meaning in what he says. He rather likes the Common Cuckoo, having discovered its parasitism of a Warbler near his parents' home. Redbeard had found the dead chicks, Sherlock observed the large chick taking food from the tiny bird, unaware that it had lost all of its children because of this creature. Sherlock grew to appreciate the Cuckoo, even though Mycroft called it a parasite and said it was ugly in comparison to the Warbler.  
  
Comparing the Woman to a bird is fairly romantic and unnecessary, but Sherlock thinks the two creatures have similar taste in survival techniques. After all, how many of Jim's men have been knocked out of the nest so she has the best seat?  
  
He selects a few shirts and two dress trousers. No tie, not when he's being Sherlock Holmes.  
  
He tucks them over his arm and waits. He didn't let her tell him if she liked snakes. Oddly enough, that bothers him. He pieces together what he knows about her and can't tell. The girl at the counter likes snakes, and her unlucky admirer does not. But, as always, the Woman is a mystery.

 

She emerges from the dressing room in the blue dress, the green over her arm. "Both of these," she tells the shop girl, rousing her out of her diagrams for a moment. The girl looks up, blinks in surprise, and rings her up accordingly, folding the velvet dress into a bag as Irene instructs her to add a pair of shoes to the bag.   
  
The dark blue dress sets off her skin with the material's slight sheen, and the V-neck allows the necklace of pearls to sit unobstructed at Irene's throat. She has swapped the position of the weapon, now tucked (slightly precariously) against a makeshift garter against her thigh. "Back to yourself again?" she asks quietly as the girl finishes wrapping up her purchases. "Or simply anticipating I won't leave your current wardrobe intact?"

 

"More the former," he says, placing his own purchases to the side. "Now, the latter."  
  
The color is like the dress in Kotor. A lot of terrible things happened in Montenegro, but he doesn't consider re-finding the Woman to be one of them. This holiday began there. This holiday that neither of them are quite ready to give up.  
  
"There's ballet," he says. "Not far from here. Perhaps this evening."

 

The shop girl's presence prevents her from directly referencing the finance minister's assassination in Kotor, but Irene hums in pleasure at the mention of the ballet. "Mmm, I do recall the opera being quite exciting the last time we went," she says, arching an eyebrow at him as the girl glances at Irene with a gesture at the things Sherlock has set aside on the counter.  
  
Irene nods, and she begins boxing them up as well. "Dinner and a show, then?" she adds slyly, her eyes all but gleaming as she gives him a sidelong look.

 

Money and who pays for the clothes is irrelevant to him. John often told Sherlock that if he'd lived without money, he might understand its value. John. What would John say about all of this? Sherlock would never know.  
  
"Yes," he says. "That would be perfect."  
  
Perfection isn't something Sherlock believes exists on many levels---except when it comes to the Woman. She is perfection. She embodies the whole of her sex to him. The whole of everything he could possibly desire in a lover. She is irreplaceable, too. He won't even bother trying when he returns to London. It won't be necessary.

 

A credit card (pickpocketed from a wealthy dowager in their earlier hotel's lobby) is traded for the bags and the transaction quickly concluded. Irene waits until they are out the shop again, the shop girl's attention back on her diagrams, before she continues, deliberately, teasingly casual, "If the correspondence in his wastebasket was any indication, our prime minister back in Stockholm is rather fond of the Bolshoi. Or their ballerinas, at the very least."

 

A slight smirk appears on Sherlock's lips.  
  
"Eternally observant, Woman," he says. "Even when I was certain I had your fullest attention."

 

She smirks in return, tucking a strand of hair caught by the autumn air back behind her ear. She continues weaving, leading their way down the streets of St. Petersburg.  
  
A grand edifice rises ahead of them, obscuring her view of the decorated onion domes, its liveried valets proclaiming the building a hotel, and quite a lavish one.  
  
"Mmm, that _would_ be a worthwhile challenge, wouldn't it?"

 

"To obtain your fullest attention?" he inquires, raising an eyebrow. She could certainly acquire his. He notes the hotel in front of them. Their next stop, he'd wager.  
  
He reaches out, taking her arm and giving her a gentle tug into the nearest alleyway.

 

 

"To keep it," she answers. He tugs at her elbow, and she does not resist, allowing him to draw her into the alleyway. She is, after all, curious. She arches an eyebrow at him in response. "After all, it's hardly as if I stop you from thinking."

 

He moves the two of them back, to press against the white brick wall in the alleyway.  
  
"It's the closest I've come to silence," he murmurs, before he leans down to press his mouth to hers.

 

Her pleased laugh is swallowed up by his mouth against hers, and Irene feels herself sinking into the kiss, her lips coaxing his apart as she curls her fingers into his shirt. She tells herself that there will be few of these moments left, that it is purposeful indulgence and not sentiment that makes her press her body against his.  
  
"And silent _is_ the second best way I like having you," she murmurs back with a nip at his bottom lip.

 

He remembers when she first asked him if he'd ever had anyone. He didn't understand then, but now, well, now he understands fully. Or, at least, mostly.  
  
He slides one hand up the fabric of her dress, tracing his fingertips across the shape of her thigh. He long ago learned that there was only so much of something one could have before it became an addiction in the eyes of society. What would Mycroft and John say to this?  
  
He drops his lips to her jaw.  
  
"And how would you like to have me now?"

 

It is not simply the touch of his fingers against her fabric covered thigh, not simply the touch of his lips against her jaw. The touch of one lover was much like that of another, variations on pressure and speed, and his were no different, not physically.   
  
But it is their words and their challenges that stimulate her, the play of their minds that makes the touch of his hand and the taste of him on her tongue that make her pulse race beneath her skin as a pleased sigh escapes her lips, as her nails claw at his shirt and her other hand curl into his hair.  
  
"I haven't decided yet," she answers breathlessly, fingers tightening in his hair. "Whether to have you against this wall or insist you wait until we have properly acquired a room as a pair of petty European aristocrats."

 

He groans at the sharp tug of her fingers in his hair.  
  
"And how would we acquire the room if it were just you and I?" Just Sherlock Holmes and the Woman, not some alias, not some ploy. Could they even do that? Could they be themselves and plan out a rendezvous, or would they have to keep everything tightly wound in who they aren't. The layers upon layers of falsehoods that keep them from becoming too sentimental. Too honest with themselves.  
  
Perhaps the only time they can is in short, unexpected bursts of desire, like right now.

 

His groan skitters against her jaw, along the skin of her throat, and his words tug at her mind, draws her back into the game. She purrs in response, nails against his scalp.   
  
"Far too simply," she gasps back in response, arching against him, drawing her leg against his thigh, the motion hiking up the hem of her dress. "But to play a part _and_ to keep this up would be a challenge."

 

He lets out a shuddering breath. She entices and arouses him, simply from the way she speaks. The way her leg draws against his thigh, well, that just increases the nerve stimulation, only adding to the arousal.  
  
"But you and I do play parts very well," he replies, nipping lightly at her jaw. Her nails on his scalp, his teeth at her throat. Two rather vicious positions to be in, and yet they seem to revel in it. The games they play are outstanding but right now:  
  
"I want you. Only you."

 

The nip of his teeth against her jaw alone could not have sent the jolt of desire searing like molten metal down her spine. But it was the bite combined with his words, with the admission that has been long simmering, long denied between them, that sent that jolt of desire down her spine.  
  
"You've had more of me than anyone ever had, Mr. Holmes," she informs him as she tugs at his hair, pulls his mouth away from his renewed exploration of her throat. "More than anyone else will ever have, I expect," she admits as she crushes her mouth to his, as if she can trap the confession between their lips.

 

 

He gasps at the tug on his hair and kisses her back fiercely. The admission from her is more than anything he could've expected between them. He has admitted long ago no one after will be his lover, and he clearly hadn't had anyone prior. She admitted that no one would have quite as much of her---and to a degree, it is the same sort of admission. Sexuality is a useless tool for personal gratification, and the Woman enjoys it. Sherlock would not enjoy it with anyone else. Emotional attachment---allowing someone in---that is a dangerous realm, and they've both stepped into it.  
  
"Hotel," he says. "Can't have our weaknesses quite so accessible to the outside world."

 


	7. Ordinary and yet Not Boring (Explicit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With a trail of bodies behind them and their secret safe again, Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes find their armour fast fracturing as they make their way through St. Petersburg, indulging in one last delay before Moscow.

No, they preferred to keep their weaknesses walled away behind cracking walls, behind fractured armour. Armour and walls that crumble the longer they are together, their sentiment seeping out between the gaps.   
  
"How fortunate there is one close," Irene gasps as she pulls back away from him, her eyes bright and pupils dilated, her skin flushed and lips bruised with the fury of their kisses. She loosens her grip on his hair, but not her grip on his shirt, as she all but drags him towards the hotel in question, its grand pale edifice staring down at them as they sweep by a bellhop.

 

She couldn't drag him easier if he were attached to a leash. To others, they must look like those amorous lovers, the ones he saw in them in that photograph taken back in Kotor. So ordinary. Ordinary and yet not boring.  
  
"You select the name," he says, gesturing to the front desk. "Blonde over there, obsessive gambler. Hit someone with her car earlier today, still trying to hide the evidence from her damaged car." The blonde bellhop straightens her hat.

 

She shivers with pleasure in response, and she wonders idly at his question before, one she has dismissed multiple times. Whether there was something fundamentally _wrong_ with them for how they found their pleasures in the game, in the twists and secrets revealed by watching other people.  
  
"A room, and privacy, please, " Irene says before the ginger haired man at the front desk can ask. Her tone is firm, arrogant and expecting to be obeyed. She does not bother with a false accent, remaining utterly herself as she passes over the dowager's stolen credit card. "For a week."  
  
She does not expect to stay for that long, but if the plan taking shape in her mind is to succeed, the fiction of a week would be quite useful.  
  
The man exchanges looks with the blonde bellhop, and he nods, taking in their bright eyes, her fingers in Sherlock's shirt. Irene can all but tell the moment he makes up his mind about them, the conclusion he draws, the amorous affair.   
  
He nods and excuses himself to find them a room, and Irene leans back, her body pressed against Sherlock's as she murmurs back to him, "She's asked our ginger concierge for help with the car. Thinks he'll be easy to manipulate. That he's interested in her. He's more likely to take photographs of the evidence and hold it over her for months before she breaks."  
  
"And who shall I say is staying with us this week?" the concierge asks as he returns with the credit card and a pair of room keys.   
  
His discretion is admirable, even as his eyes flicker down to the credit card and the name on it. She can see him work, seem him memorize the name on the card, for future reference. "Put down the name Irene Adler," Irene instructs, taking the card and the keys. She quirks an eyebrow at Sherlock, a challenge on her lips. "And you'll be Sherlock Holmes for the duration of our stay?"

 

He lets out another breath with her words, not unlike the breath he released when she gripped his hair earlier. There is very little difference between sexual and intellectual between them, and that is what makes them work.  
  
"Yes," he agrees. "I think I will." A beat. "But I'm not wearing the hat."  
  
He scans the length of the table, and sees a black jacket at the end of it, with a mobile phone in the pocket. Boy's jacket, his phone. Prevent the girl from being blackmailed? It's her own fault for being a hit and run driver. Possibly acquire interesting information? Make up for the awful gift that nearly killed the Woman and himself?  
  
As they pass it, he lowers one hand to slip the phone from the jacket. An easy enough loss. One he won't notice until he's trying to find something to blackmail the girl.

 

The concierge notes their 'aliases' in the hotel's database, and Irene preens internally at what would happen if those aliases were found in St. Petersburg. The less than false names as aliases, the name on the stolen credit card, and the purported week-long stay, should muddle the waters quite nicely.  
  
She feels him shift, lowering his hand, as they pass the table, and Irene laughs low in her throat as she punches the button for the elevator with her hip. "If you keep up all that protesting about the hat," she tells him, her lips tracing a line along his jaw as they wait, "I might have to insist you wear it someday on principle."

 

"In your previous line of work, you knew about 'hard negatives'," he says, words soft and sensual. He brushes his lips against her cheek.  
  
"Wearing the hat is a _hard negative_."

 

"Then it's a good thing I already have photographic evidence of you in the hat," she purrs back. Behind her, the elevator dings, announcing its arrival, and the doors roll open quietly. Irene doesn't bother looking to see if anyone is exiting the elevator, instead pulling him with her into it. Her fingers remain in his shirt, though her other hand runs along his arm, down to his hand that had slipped into the concierge's jacket.

 

"And hard negatives are for clients, Mr. Holmes. You've never been a client."

 

Should she go for the mobile, he's going to hold onto it firmly. Should she not, well, maybe he'll still hold onto it, offer it up later. Or they could play for it. Play something for it. They deserved that.  
  
"I was a mark, once," he says. "And you were my target."  
  
That day back in Buckingham Palace seems so very, very far away from now. Back when she was an alluring but dangerous opponent. She's still very much the same, but they have something that ties them together, now. Far more than just the cells growing within her.

 

Her fingers linger against his wrist, dancing along the traitorous pulse point, as she steps towards him, putting him between her and the elevator's wall. They clearly should push the button, send the elevator up to the proper floor, but she doesn't, not just yet.   
  
"A mark I succeeded in making," she agrees, nipping at his earlobe as her hand snakes from his wrist to his hand, towards the mobile he clutches, not to take it, not yet. To play, to make it clear that she knows he's taken it. "Have you hit your target?"

 

"I'm too distracted to aim properly," he replies. Her teeth against his earlobe send his pulse to racing. Anticipation, desire. The chemicals pumping through his brain and blood from neuron reactions. It's impossible to simply and coldly reduce what they have to chemistry, now. She's ingrained herself too much into him.  
  
He imagines she'll even be in his Mind Palace, once they've separated.  
  
Her fingers right by the mobile, he releases it, raising his hands to cup the sides of her face, to kiss her deeply.

 

Under any other circumstance, she would have caught the mobile. Would have anticipated him letting it go and caught it before he even let go. But he is her worst distraction, the one thing, the one person, that can sway her away like this. And when he pulls her to him, his kiss deep and searing, she finds her reflexes slowed, and her fingers grasp for the phone a split second too late.  
  
How fortunate, that they are pressed close then, that as he cups her face in his hands, she presses her body against his, pinning him between her and the wall of the elevator, keeping the mobile from clattering to the floor.   
  
She kisses him back, and the hand in his shirt loosens just enough for her to claw at the fabric, her nails raking against cloth covered skin, before she reaches over blindly to feel for the elevator buttons.  
  
"Should I be disappointed, Mr. Holmes?" she asks breathlessly, her hips rocking against him as she tries to mentally count the number of buttons, to hit the button for the hotel's top floor. "I expect you to know exactly where to aim, given the amount of practice you've had of late."

 

 

He opens his eyes and can see her hand in the reflection of them behind her. He reaches out his hand, takes her wrist, and lifts it up to the top button. He won't press it himself, of course. That's for the Woman to manage.  
  
He's losing track of this metaphor. Aiming and hitting a target only relate him back to firing a gun at the wall. Unless they're talking about the practical applications of sex, in which case, well, they hit the target well enough. But he refuses to admit any confusion. He'll play along until he catches up. He always does, with her.  
  
"Allow me to practice more," he says, sliding his other hand up her thigh again, this time pushing the dress aside to touch skin.

 

She nips at his bottom lip in retaliation for his unasked for assistance with the elevator controls, but it is teasing, wanting, a matter of principle more than irritation. Still she presses the button, hears the doors shut behind them, and purrs in approval as his hand touches her skin.  
  
They both prefer things ordered, knowledge in crisp, clean, precise lines. His deductions about where people have been, what they do, her deductions about what they liked. They thrived on that orderliness, on untangling the puzzles and making them plain. But together they muddle the waters, bloody the waters, tangle themselves in each other, a metaphor is hardly the first casualty of their entanglement.  
  
Still, she hums in approval, her hand freed from the elevator now running up along his arm, against his shoulder, up to the back of his neck, long nails tracing her path. "Are you asking for permission?" she tries to ask coolly. Tries, because her voice is far too breathless, far too wanting, for it to be wholly effective.

 

"No," he replies, firmly. Or, at least, he tries for firmly. He holds no illusions as to who is really in control here, and he's pretty sure his voice betrays that.  
  
How much can they get away with in the lift? What is the likelihood that the door will open on each floor? Can he drop to his knees and trace his tongue along her thigh before they make it where they're going?  
  
Her fingernails run up the back of his neck and he finds a low groan in the back of his throat. It is impossible to deny arousal, or to deny that he wants permission.  
  
"I won't beg again," he says, a smile on his lips.

 

"You're a terrible liar," she retorts, the words warm and throaty as she shivers at the way his low groan skitters across her skin. Her fingers tighten in his hair, and she smirks back, her eyes dark and dilated as she looks at him, as she shifts her hips against him again. "We both know you enjoy it when I make you beg."  
  
The hand not caught in his hair follows the line of his shirt's buttons down, until she reaches the front of his trousers, and she hooks her finger into the buttonhole, her teeth flashing white as she smiles, as if daring him to stop her from doing exactly as she pleased in the elevator.

 

He smiles in return, equally vicious. "I also know you like it when I fight back," he replies. He presses against her hips, lowering his mouth to her throat again, kissing, tasting, attempting to not _think_ quite so much about the likelihood of being caught in such a public place.  
  
After all, had they not been intimate in clothes closets, atop desks, and in moving cars before?

 

She arches into the touch of his mouth against her skin, into the promise of friction of his body against hers, and a part of her knows it is giving in, to _want_ this quite as much as she does. But he draws this out of her, heated desire and wanting need, when she is used to coolly calculated passions. Her hand loosens in his hair, sets against his unwounded shoulder and she exerts enough pressure to indicate she wants him down.  
  
"On your knees, Mr. Holmes," she commands, the purr of approval he coaxes from her throat turning the words into something more like a growl. "Start at the knee, and we'll see how high your mouth can get before that elevator door opens again."

 

He could. He could drop to his knees and do precisely as commanded. At the same time, this may be the last time they are together, and, really, he has no intention of rushing anything. Not for the clock on the wall (they have missed their train), nor for Mycroft (he wouldn't come this far East), and certainly not for the elevator doors.  
  
He drops to his knees, mouth going to her exposed right knee. He draws up a schematic of the nervous system, of the blood vessels in the knee, and the ones that are closest to the skin. He needed this information for a case once involving a suction machine and a person drained entirely of blood through the skin, but never thought he'd use it in order to find sensitive places on a Woman's kneecap.  
  
He focuses on the knee. Refuses to move upwards. Mouth to sensitive areas. High nerve content and probability of blood circulation near the surface of the skin.

 

He refuses to move, instead lavishing attention on her knee, and it is deliciously frustrating and so very _him_. Irene gasps as his mouth moves over the sensitive, ticklish inside of her knee and her fingers slide into his hair again.   
  
They are still floors from their destination, but the elevator slows, and Irene's eyes fly open. She looks up at the floor indicator above the door, and a wicked, languorous smile spreads over her face as she turns her attention and heavy-lidded eyes back to Sherlock, her hand in his hair with absolutely no intention of letting him up.

 

He has absolutely no intention of _getting_ up, very satisfied with keeping his lips on her kneecap, then just above it. He calculates there's mere minutes until they're at their destination, and he intends to take this as slowly as physically possible.  
  
His hands trace up her thigh, splaying out against warm, smooth skin. He imagines suntans on her skin he will never see and stretch marks he will never know. The holidays together have been promised and planned, but will they actually happen?

 

His long, dexterous fingers trace up her thigh and Irene hums with pleasure, the hum becoming a low laugh as she rests the hand not tangled in his hair against his to pull his hand from her skin.  
  
"I don't recall saying you could use your hands," she informs him as the doors to the elevator slide open. She is facing the elevator's wall, and from the angle can only see the shadow of the waiting guests who are hoping to enter the elevator, but she can hear their footsteps (at least one of them an elderly woman in a walker, judging by the light shaky step and the muffled clink of aluminum) and the movement of light out of the corner of her eye as they step into the elevator.

 

Daring him to stop. People on the floor coming in, and Sherlock could absolutely not care less. He continues to kiss her knee, to trace his hands up her thigh. One of the patrons gasps in surprise, and nearly bumps into the woman with the walker (73, myopic, no biological children, probably has emphysema.) But he doesn't care. He'll only stop if the Woman wants him to.  
  
He imagines she won't.  
  
"I don't recall actually listening to what you said," he replies.

 

She tosses her head back, errant curls falling over her shoulder, and laughs a low, throaty laugh of pleasure at both his resistance and his ministrations. She will miss this, she knows. Because no one knows how to play the game like he does, and there is never the danger of losing with anyone else.   
  
He was right, that she _likes_ this. And she refuses to let this be the end. There will be Moscow, and holidays after. She is Irene Adler, and she will refuse to let the world deny her.   
  
The toss of her head allows Irene a better glimpse of the two that were attempting to enter the elevator through her lashes. An elderly woman with an oxygen tank. Her younger male companion (adopted son, if the nose was any indication), hair greying at the temples. The woman does not notice the tableau in front of her as she attempts to navigate her walker over the gap between floor and elevator, though her shocked son does, and tries to grab the walker, to pull her out of the elevator.  
  
"You listened well enough when I told you to kneel," she grounds out, her fingers tightening in and pulling at his hair as his hands run along the soft sensitive skin of her thigh, coaxing a near moan out of her.

 

"John's always told me I have selective hearing," Sherlock replies. He sees the son pull his mother out of the elevator, and a thrill runs through him. He is now himself more than ever, and the number of times someone has pulled someone else away from him is, in all likelihood, on the rather high end of the bell curve. Not for something like this.  
  
"I really do wish they'd get a move on."

 

"Well I _never_ ," the son in question huffs as he guides his mother back out, murmuring something about waiting for the next elevator to her.   
  
Irene laughs again, shifting so she can lean forward, the hand not curled in his hair bracing against the wall of the elevator. The son huffs again, offended, but the whirl of the door closing swallows any retort he may make, and Irene runs the instep of her foot against Sherlock's thigh.  
  
"Always so impatient, Mr. Holmes."

 

"Yes," he replies, pressing his lips to the inside of her thigh. Will she taste differently once the holiday is over? Once she has given birth? How many things will change for her? For him?  
  
He tries very hard to push all of these thoughts from his mind. To think of this holiday as not the end, but the beginning, really. A lifetime of a strange but essentially perfect arrangement for them.  
  
He growls, low in his throat, at the sensation of her foot against his thigh.  
  
"I doubt I'm the only one who is _impatient_."

 

The thought comes into her mind that she _really_ should have noticed the side effect of pregnancy, the heightened sensitivity, but Irene pushes that particular thought away with ruthless efficiency as his lips continue their steady migration upwards to her thigh.   
  
She draws a deep, shuddering breath, tries to force her voice steady as his growl against her skin, at the admission that he is as affected as she is. "Only impatient to see you squirm," she assures him.

 

There is a light ding, and the elevator stops at their floor. Certainly not fast enough for Sherlock. He rolls back on his heels, moving away from her thigh with a slow smile appearing on his face, the purloined mobile phone clattering, forgotten, to the ground.  
  
"I never _squirm_ ," he replies, moving to his feet.  
  
Calmly, certainly not betraying his erection or his racing heart, he gestures for her to exit the lift first. Perfect gentleman, after all.

 

She straightens, runs her hands along her skirt to straighten it, and gives him a cool look in response. Her steps are steady, measured, as she turns deliberately away from him to leave the elevator.   
  
The only thing that betrays either of them is the dilation of their eyes, even as her fingers itch to have him under her hands, to drag her nails across his skin. Her footsteps are deliberately slow as she steps out into the warm, tastefully lit hotel corridor, its plush carpet muffling her steps, deliberately slow as she turns left to head to their room, giving him a slow, challenging smirk as she does, as if daring him to keep up, or insist she pick up her pace.

 

He attempts to appear nonchalant, but he is anything but. He is squirming inside to press her up against the wall, to have her push him down. But he's going to take his time, and that's going to require more privacy than this hallway will allow him.  
  
She's being deliberately slow. He has to all but halve his step in order to keep in time with her.  
  
"Do you want me to carry you?" he finds himself asking, petulantly.

 

She stops then, even as every part of her wants to feel his skin beneath her hands, to feel his hands on her skin, and leans into him, hips deliberately pressing, teasing, against his body as she arches up to whisper against his jaw, her breath warm and words low with simmering heat and desire.  
  
"Not liking the pace I'm setting?"

 

"Pace? What pace?" he replies, voice heavy with desire but tinged with teasing. "We're practically standing still."  
  
Which isn't what he wants to be doing. He wants to take her now, to pull her towards him and---and---  
  
He reaches a hand up, as though to cup her face, but keeps his fingers just centimeters from her skin. "Unless you'd prefer to wait."

 

She is far too aware of the radiant heat of his body against her skin, from beneath the layers of clothes they both wear, from his fingertips so near her face. "You are far too quick a study," she says, mock irritated despite the obvious approval in her voice.  
  
She quickens her steps again, the hotel key between her fingers. "Perhaps I simply wanted to see if you'd actually back up that threat of picking me up."

 

"Considering my muscle density and your approximate weight, I doubt that would be anything even remotely close to a problem," Sherlock responds.  
  
He adds, following at her new pace. "It's all simply a matter of timing."

 

Their room is at the corner, out of the way, private, the light of the wall sconces reflecting off the rich polished wood paneling of the hallway. Irene stops in front of it, the hotel key card still between her fingers, and leans back against the door nonchalantly.   
  
"Bodily ability was never in question," she informs him, her eyes, dark and dilated, gleaming in the light of the corridor, sweeping slowly over him. "But whether you would ever admit to not liking the pace I set."

 

He takes a step towards her, pressing himself against her. He effectively has her pinned to the wall, but neither of them truly believe that she is trapped there. Sherlock knows that even this way, he is as submissive to her as he was when she had him collared back in Sweden. (That is to say, he's very likely to be stubborn, cause a fuss, and not follow orders, but that's what she likes.)  
  
"I can admit to not liking quite a few things you've set," he says, leaning down to press his lips to her jugular.

 

He pins her against the wall, and while she knows it would be a matter of absolute ease to make him kneel again, Irene knows too that in other ways he has trapped her as effectively as he has now, by the way he has wormed himself into her mind, into her games, into her very body. And she _likes_ it, even more than the feel of his lips and teeth against her throat, the way that they have tangled themselves in each other, the way they can mix pain and pleasure and the threat of _losing_ the game that they both play so equally well.  
  
It was, after all, precisely what they both liked. A real challenge, and with it the very real possibility of defeat.  
  
She arches into the touch of his lips, her body deliberately moving against his, all warm soft skin and the promise of friction.   
  
"Then perhaps you should start admitting those things," she answers, her breath hitching in her throat as she blindly reaches for the door to insert the key card, relying on the sound of the telltale beep to let her know the door was unlocked.

 

He doesn't wait for her. The moment the beep of the lock indicates that they can move forward, his hand jerks out to push open the door, and moves back just as quickly to wrap his arm around her back, to attempt to lift her up and carry her inside.  
  
After all, he would never think to publicly embarrass the Woman. Not really. But he would make good on a threat, particularly if it was one that could be especially enjoyable.  
  
Two steps inside, and he'll keep her off her feet still, but press her against the wall again, this time moving his mouth to meet hers.

 


	8. Deliberation and Deduction (Explicit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A night's delay in St. Petersburg before they must make their way to Moscow allows Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler to indulge in a game only they play.

She gasps at the unexpectedly swift way he wraps his arms around her, bodily picking her up and sweeping them into the hotel room. By the time the door swings shut with an audible click, his mouth is on hers, and Irene finds herself kissing him back with all the smoldering desire their game has fanned in the elevator.  
  
Her nails dig into his unwounded shoulder as she kissed him, parting his lips, delving deep as the smug laugh begins to bubble up, as she wraps her legs around his waist, the motion hiking the hem of her dress upward. "A few more seconds, and I would have had you trying this in the hall, Mr. Holmes," she tries to say against his lips.

 

"I disagree," he says, moving his mouth immediately to her neck, and as her legs are wrapped around his hips, he braces them against the wall with one hand, and moves the other up her thigh.  
  
"But we'll never find out in a practical and scientific way, will we?" he murmurs. "I suppose we'll be left with nothing but cruel speculation."

 

There is trust in their position, though it is one of mutual desire and self-serving, which is far easier to swallow than trust built on sentiment that they find so much more important to deny. But with Sherlock bracing them both, Irene does not bother herself with worrying about balance, instead shifting against his growing erection as his hand moves up her thigh.  
  
Her braced right hand is still dexterous enough to undo buttons, and she sets to it quickly, undoing enough of the buttons on his shirt to push the collar away from his shoulder, to let her nails dig into his skin rather than through cloth.  
  
"What a pity. Fortunately, I have far better ways of being cruel that you like."

 

He lets out a shuddering breath at her body against his erection. There are nerve endings there that she can stimulate physically, and then there are the mental nerve endings she finds with her words, her actions. She drives him _mad_ , and she knows it.  
  
Her nails bite into his skin, and he doesn't flinch, even as his hips buck into hers, just slightly.  
  
He thinks about taking the cord from the lamp near the bed, using it as a tie for his hands, and the complimentary toothpaste, using that as a cooling stimulant for her nipples or clitoris, and all of the dozens of other options within the room. The pen and the half-used pad of paper could even be utilized, given enough creative energy.  
  
"Surprise me," he murmurs against her throat as his hands travel upwards, thumb brushing against her hipbone. He feels silk and lace. He doesn't look down, simply theorizes.  
  
"Red."

 

Her knickers are actually deep blue silk, edged in black lace, and she laughs, low and pleased and utterly smug, at his guess even as she shifts her hips again, as much to tease him as to urge the touch of his hand against her skin.   
  
"Wrong," she answers, moving her hand from the buttons of his shirt to follow his upward, to hike her own hem up to reveal a sliver of blue silk. "Your shirt will do nicely," she says even as his mouth lingers against a particularly sensitive spot at the hollow of her throat, "as punishment for guessing wrong."

 

"Blue, of course it was blue. Stupid!" he hisses to himself. Logically, from what she was wearing before and her movements within the dressing room---  
  
He gasps at her movement, and moves his hand away from her knickers, up to his shirt, which he gracelessly removes his arm from.  
  
"I never cared for it anyway," he says, kissing her again.

 

She unbuttons a few more buttons in order to shed the shirt in question more completely from his shoulder, the motion forcing (allowing) her to shift against him some more, riding the hem of her skirt higher over her hips. It is dangerous, to tease him so, because it teases her as well with the promise of friction.  
  
"I should have your trousers too," she murmurs against his mouth, biting at his lower lip before deepening the kiss again. "For lying about the shirt. High thread count, well tailored stitching. It is precisely what you like."

 

"Mmmm, but I think I'll have your knickers for being wrong," he says. "The cuff has links, not buttons."  
  
He lowers his hand to her hip again, curling his thumb around the lace.  
  
"But a good start at a deduction," he says, focusing on kissing her yet again.

 

Kissing him is as much a contest as their deductions, as their current attempts to undress each other. And it is as addicting. She allows herself a moment to focus simply on kissing him back, on lips and tongue and teeth and drawing breath, rather than on grinding against his hips, on running her fingers along his shoulder.  
  
But she wants to have him gasping beneath her hands, to feel the sharp intake of air, the shuddering sigh of his mouth against hers. And so she eases the shirt off his shoulders, still hanging on by one sleeve, and runs her fingers along his back, tracing the curve of his spine, before digging her nails deep, drawing furrows of bright red against his pale skin.  
  
"I'd have to unwrap my legs for you to have my knickers," she tells him breathlessly, "and that's not going to happen anytime soon."

 

He gasps again, this time in slight surprise. It's always surprise when she draws her nails across his skin, far more because of the surprise at how _good_ it feels, as opposed to how painful. Scratches in the past from angry witnesses and Molly's cat never brought out arousal like this, never left him desiring more dark red marks on his skin.  
  
She's still removed his shirt, he realizes. She must've seen the slight lie (he doesn't like cuff links, but he does like that shirt.) She is still fully dressed, though. This is a problem.  
  
"You owe me a garment, though," he insists. He considers the dress itself. Really, it's just in the way.

 

His gasp against her mouth is like a jolt of liquid desire down her spine, and Irene laughs, nips at his bottom lip again with her teeth. "For that small of an incorrect deduction, you can have a shoe," she retorts, tracing over the red lines her nails made with the soft pads of her fingertips, alternating pain and careful pleasure.  
  
She shifts against him again, tightening her legs around his hips, and kisses him again as her hand runs down his bared chest, lingering against the fading scar of the knife wound back in Kotor. "You're always Sherlock Holmes just under the disguise," she murmurs. "Which means boxers, in silk or nothing at all."

 

He reaches an arm back, sliding down her calf and to her ankle, where he removes one of the shoes he was promised.  
  
She's right, of course. He smirks at her, at the tightness of her legs around his hips, and the way she moves against him. He has every intention of taking this as unbelievably slowly as possible, _savoring_ their time together like it is the last promised meal before lengthy fast.  
  
He raises an eyebrow. "But what color?"

 

The touch of his hand against her ankle should not make her want to gasp, should not make her want to purr with pleasure as he removes her shoe. But then he is Sherlock Holmes and she is Irene Adler and what they do to each other has never been _logical_. They stir passion by words and by challenge, by brain work as much as a finger run along an ankle.   
  
"Navy blue," she answers, arching an eyebrow back at him. Her fingers trace down his back again, soft fingertips rather than sharp nails for the moment. "Striped. You chose them because they remind you of that very comfortable dressing gown of yours."

 

He drops the shoe to the side and traces his finger up her foot. Her pupils are dilated. She likes being touched on her foot. Her ankle.  
  
"You like this," he says. A lame deduction, but good enough for him. "Interesting."  
  
He moves his mouth to hers again. Another kiss, this one deliberately slow.

 

There is a deliberateness to the game that is different from their usual frenzied coupling. They come together like waves against the shore, most times, seemingly unaffected, massive amounts of kinetic energy boiling just beneath the surface until there is a catalyst, an obstruction, that causes the wave to break, frenzied and rough against the shore. But this time there is a deliberateness to his motion, that is more than exploration as he kisses her again, as her tongue delves into his mouth and chases his. It is hard to explain, to put into words exactly how she knows, exactly what is different, but it puts Irene into mind that he is savouring this, letting each touch linger for absolutely no reason but to make the pleasure last.  
  
As if savouring a last meal before the famine.  
  
Her lips curve into a slow smile as she kisses him back, as she pulls away from his mouth to trail a kiss along his jaw, along the beginnings of a dusting of five o'clock shadow on his skin, rough against her lips.  
  
"You should be more specific," she murmurs, shifting deliberately against him again as his hand runs along the instep of her now-bare foot. "Or I'm taking the belt."

 

He would give her the belt, willingly, but it would mean he deduced incorrectly, and his pride always oversteps his sexual desire. Irritating though that is.  
  
"The touch to your ankle," he says. He slides his thumb across the ligament at her heel. "Not something I would have recognized as sexual, but the number of nerve endings make sense."

 

A sharp intake of breath betrays her, though Irene refuses to let it dissuade her from making her way up along his jaw, to catch his earlobe between her teeth. "The belt, Mr. Holmes," she says smugly, her words little more than a breath against his ear. "You're right about the nerve endings, but it takes more than simply nerve endings to make a touch pleasurable."  
  
She runs a single fingernail lightly along his back again, a ghost of the raking she'd given him before, that she would again, but not yet. "Or are you telling me you enjoy being scratched at by your clients as much as this?"

 

"It hasn't happened yet," he replies. "I shall have to experiment."  
  
He moves his hand from her ankle, and goes to undo his belt. She's lost one shoe, he's shirtless and without a belt. This isn't going as he'd prefer.  
  
He has no idea what to deduce. He needs to deduce something, to undress her. He has to remove her other shoe, her dress, her knickers, and then take her. Completely.  
  
"Your turn."

 

"I doubt you'd get very far," she answers, continuing to run her hand up his back, nails scraping teasingly light against his skin. "You'd lose patience with them long before you get to this point."  
  
Her tongue darts out to trace the outer curve of his ear, another light warm touch that is nowhere near enough. "You rarely admit I'm right," she tells him. "I think it's because it forces you to admit you were wrong."

 

He lets out a short laugh, that is more genuine than he usually laughs. Apart from with her, that is. She brings those out of him as often as she manages to bring him away from the side of the angels.  
  
"Obvious," he says. "You shouldn't get anything for that."  
  
His breath hitches at the feeling of her tongue against her ear.  
  
"You choose your heels for sound, as well as height."

 

"Also obvious," she answers. She nips at his ear again, nails digging into his uninjured shoulder.   
  
"I'm starting to think you'd rather I kept my clothes on at this rate, Mr. Holmes."

 

"Wrong," he says, instantly. "What shall I remove?"

 

"Hmmm," she draws the sound out long and slow, as if giving serious weight to the question as she trails her lips against his jaw.   
  
"You've already claimed my knickers for the cuff links, even if you haven't made good on that yet," she muses. "I think your only options left for the moment are the other heel and the dress."

 

The dress is too obvious. It's the thing he clearly wants removed, but if he went there, it would show an amount of desperation that he has no intention of allowing her to see. Part of his mind informs him that he should go for the obvious, then, because it would be unexpected. (This is, undoubtedly, the part of his mind that wants the Woman to be undressed as quickly as possible.)  
  
He slides his hand back to her other shoe, tossing it aside instantly.  
  
"I have a slight advantage when it comes to the number of clothing articles," he says. "But you believe that I'll still be completely undressed first."

 

She smiles, slow and sinful as she kisses him again, her fingers twining back in his hair as her mouth parts his, all lazy laconic simmering sexuality. "Wrong," she purrs back. "I _know_ I'll have you undressed first."  
  
She shifts, writhes against him, effectively trapped between him and the wall of the hotel room, but still able to control exactly what parts of her body she presses against his. "Just like I knew you'd take the heel rather than the dress. Wouldn't want to appear too eager." Her fingers tighten in his hair, pulling his head back, and she continues. "I think that'll be the trousers. _And_ the boxers."

 

He lets out a breath of air at the way she shifts against him. God, she feels amazing against him, her body and his. And she's succeeding very easily at undressing him. All he has left is her dress, and he's not entirely certain he can work out what to say to remove it. She is so hidden from him. She has so many mysteries.  
  
But he doesn't want her to win. He has to have the last word, after all. It's the way he's been with everyone. Everyone apart from the Woman in his arms.  
  
"I don't think I can remove them without moving you," he says. He lowers his lips to her throat.  
  
"Jasmine, floral..." he considers, smelling the faint traces of her perfume. He can taste it on his lips. "Cascade? No...Casmir."

 

His lips are at her throat and Irene finds herself arching into the touch of his mouth against her skin even as he murmurs his triumphant response. She gasps, the sound one of twined triumph and need, and she nods. "Experimented on what scent I left on your coat collar?" she tries to ask, but her own desire makes her breath hitch, makes the words wanting despite herself, and Irene opens her eyes long enough to focus on the room and its tasteful furniture for a moment.  
  
"The bed?" she suggests, then catches herself, wicked laughter on her tongue. "No, the desk."

 

"We've only just been on a desk," he says. And he has every intention of taking his time. A desk could mean a sense of urgency, a need to be fast. But now they have all night. He intends to enjoy each minute.  
  
"The bed," he says, moving an arm under her buttock, and lifting her easily. Her legs around his waist, her light frame, it's no effort at all to move them both.

 

He has her well enough that Irene loosens her grip in his hair, though her other arm remains around his shoulders, and with her free hand begins trailing down his chest, into the small space between them to begin unhooking the button on his trousers.  
  
The fact that the motion brings her fingers perilously, deliciously close to her clitoris is perhaps only somewhat accidental as he moves them both towards the wide bed. "Denying me already," she asks. "Is this how you intend to play, Mr. Holmes?"

 

"Always," he replies. Her fingertips are near his erection, unhooking his trousers. He moves her towards the bed, every part of him intending to undress her immediately upon arrival there. It astounds him that at one point in his life, not even that far behind them, he thought sex and sexuality was an enormous waste of time.  
  
"In certain aspects." Her fingertips are, he notices, close to her clitoris. Would a slight movement of his leg as they walk press her fingertips there, as well? He decides to find out.

 

The motion of his legs as he walks nudges her fingers away from his waistband and the erection straining against his trousers to her own silk-covered clitoris, and Irene shivers involuntarily as the incidental touch sends a jolt of pleasure down her spine, teasing and anticipatory.  
  
"Apparently not in this aspect," she answers breathlessly, running her fingers along her knickers again, as if suddenly far more interested in pleasuring herself than in undoing him.

 

She appears far more interested in herself---and this is likely a ruse, but Sherlock doesn't care. It's a moment to focus, to move them towards the bed, or the desk, or back to the wall. Wherever they go, he simply needs to undress her immediately. And himself, eventually.  
  
"And what would possibly make you think I'm doing this for you?" he teases, moving to the bed. The bed, he decides, is an ideal height. He can kneel, she can lay, and he can memorize the parts of her he plans on never forgetting. With his mouth, of course.

 

She tightens her legs around his waist, purposely shifting her thigh against his erection as she hooks a finger against the elastic of her knickers, to ease the moist silk away from sensitive flesh and allow herself better access.   
  
"Nothing," she purrs back. "What makes you think I'd let you do anything at all?"

 

He catches her wrist, attempting to raise it up, to moisten her fingertips with his mouth.  
  
"And why wouldn't you?"

 

It isn't in her to let him have what he wants easily, just as it isn't in him to submit without fighting back. They are people for whom the rest of the world is no challenge, and the challenge is part and parcel of each other's appeal.  
  
So she resists initially when he catches her arm, forcing him to tighten his grip around her slender wrist before her fingers meet his mouth. And the touch of his tongue on the sensitive pads of her fingers is electric, reinforcing the desire that their mutual intellectual play had sparked. She gasps and squirms against him again, this time with marginally less deliberation, marginally more desperation.  
  
She expects he would notice, and be irritably, gloriously smug at making her lose even that modicum of control.  
  
"You're going to need to sit down on that bed," she tells him, breathing hard. "Now."  
  
Irritating, how the command sounds so similar to a please.

 

"Am I, now?" he purrs against her fingertips. He releases her hand, but does as she commands, lowering himself to the bed.  
  
This is not at all because of the jolt of electricity that shot up his spine at the sound of her gasp, and the way she squirms against him. He likes to think that her movements are as desperate as he feels, but he can never tell with her. She is a mystery to him, and as she will always be.

 

He sits, and she sighs in mingled satisfaction and relief that he does so. It allows her to untangle her legs from around his waist, to kneel on the mattress while still straddling him and generally allow her more control to do as she'd like. Which she does almost immediately, taking her weight back on her legs, moving so that she can properly remove his belt, properly undo the front of his trousers with quick fingers.  
  
She smirks at him as she slides the zip of his fly downward, almost painfully slow against his erection, her other hand freeing his belt from his belt loops. "I did say I'd have your trousers and your belt first, didn't I?"

 

He lets out a sigh, but raises his own hands up to her hips.  
  
"And I'd have your knickers," he says, moving his fingers up to the lace and silk again.  
  
"And I've earned your dress, too."

 

For a moment, Irene indulges in the feel of the supple leather of the belt against her fingertips, in the promise bite it could inflict, before his hands along her hips to grip the dark blue silk knickers draws her attention back to what he is doing, this time with far less obstacles between them. She drapes the belt around his bare neck, like an undone necktie, its leather and metal ends hanging against his chest, and raises herself on her knees again, either to better ease his trousers over his hips or to better allow him to ease the knickers from hers.  
  
It was hard to say, in the moment, which was more likely.  
  
"Do you think I'd allow you to have my dress just because you've earned it?" she teases, her voice hitching, her breathing heavy as she arches into the touch of his hands, as she tugs the waistband of his trousers down.   
  
She barely notices the threat of a few tearing stitches.

 

"Yes," he says, slipping his fingertips between her hips and the material of her knickers. The feel of the leather around his shoulders reminds him of the collar in Sweden, and he can't hide the flash of excitement in his eyes at the memory. He wouldn't just allow her to collar him because she earned it, either. But it was worth it when she did.  
  
His trousers go over his hips, and his arousal is prominent under his own undergarments.  
  
"You rarely play by the rules, however," he admits. "One of your better qualities."

 

The flash of excitement in his eyes, the twitch of his body beneath hers, sends another shot of liquid desire up Irene's spine, and she continues to draw his trousers down just enough to ensure they've cleared his hips before her left hand reaches up to grip the two ends of the belt around his neck, and she runs the tip of her finger along the length of his erection through the silk of his boxers.  
  
"Mmm," she purrs, for the moment seeming content to no longer undress him, her hand tightening on the leather belt around his neck. She moves her body against his, as if to press herself against the length of him, but stops just short, even as the movement rucks up her skirt even more, the lean lines and soft curves of her body close but not touching his. "You must be distracted. You're being _very_ flattering."

 

"Am I?" he replies, breath hitching involuntarily at her touch against his pants. "I hadn't----noticed."  
  
She is teasing. Her body is close to his but not touching him, her hand holding the belt but not clasping it around his neck. Vicious. His first thought is that he can do better than the sexual desire he's feeling now, better than just _giving in_.  
  
He moves his hands from her knickers, raising them back up to her hips, then a little higher, to run up her back. He moves a hand to hers, raising it up.  
  
"You backhanded someone just outside of St. Petersburg," he says. "Chipped nails, slightly to the right, you chipped them when you lifted him up. Threatening him. He must have grabbed you with the opposite hand, there's no bruising."

 

She draws a long, shuddering breath at his litany, at the lengthy deduction he offers, and there is no doubt in Irene's mind that her pupils are dark and dilated, that his deduction, his intellectual prowess is as exciting and as arousing as physical touch.   
  
"You are being unconscionably wicked, Mr. Holmes," she growls, her fingers flexing in his hand, as if reminding him, or herself, that the deduced backhand could happen now. "But perhaps he just grabbed me by the coat. No bruises then either."

 

"Coat wouldn't have required the secondary insult," he says. This is, in its own way, more fun than just a physical touch. She is the only person on the planet he imagines who could understand the appeal.  
  
He leans towards her, pressing his lips to her throat as he speaks, a gentle kiss with his words.  
  
"Someone low-level, not worthy of too much time, nor sparing a notice for your nails. Petty thug, or a drug dealer. No one of import, but someone just insulting enough to make certain you made your point."

 

It does not surprise her that he has managed to figure out so precisely what she _liked_. It should concern her, that she has been laid so bare, but his words are like opium smoke to her senses, proof of an intellect that can match hers, that can _play_ with hers.   
  
"Very good," she purrs with obvious relish, though she is leaning unconsciously into the lips at her throat, to the warmth and physical presence of his mouth as much as to the words he uses.  
  
She wants him desperately at this moment, feeling far too much like a taut violin string, as he teased her body and mind. "It would have been more satisfying if I'd been wearing the ring then," she admits. "As it was he only split his lip."

 

Not wearing the ring. He nearly tells her that she wasn't wearing it because she was angry with the situation, angry with him and their holiday, and how her life was going to be changed by this pregnancy. How she must have, on some rudimentary level, blamed him for it. He did, after all, blame himself for it. Her life was changed, and he should have been a more careful lover.  
  
Sense catches him at the last possible second, and he doesn't say this. For the first reason, he would ruin the mood they have cultivated together. For the second, it isn't the right deduction.  
  
He pulls her fingers apart, gently, and leans away from her neck to look at them.  
  
"Swelling of the fingers?" he says. "Slight water retention, made the ring too tight."

 

It is not something she had considered at the time whens she'd pulled the ring from her finger. She had been, after all, more concerned with basic things, with laying out plans to disappear, with the minutiae of what it meant to be Irene Adler, to be the usurper of Moriarty's throne, and to be pregnant all at once. It had been an excellent distraction from discovering all the changes in her body that she had missed, had perhaps subconsciously ignored.  
  
She had tried to remind herself of what it meant to be Irene Adler without Sherlock Holmes when she'd taken the ring off. And a part of her had hated how it had felt wrong without.   
  
"Perhaps," she allows, curling her left fingers closed again, to keep him from his continued scrutiny of the changes she is only starting to accept. "I had other things on my mind."  
  
She leans in close, her lips a hairsbreadth from his jaw, and murmurs teasingly. "Though I suggest, Mr. Holmes, that if you're going to continue studying female bodies, that water retention should be the _last_ thing you consider offering as a deduction."

 

He smiles. A slow smile, a satisfied smile, one that only the Woman can bring out of him.  
  
"You know as well as I do that I have no interest in studying female bodies," he says. There is only the Woman, to him.  
  
He lowers one hand again, this time to her thigh, to trace his fingertips up her skin. She manages to be alluring without trying, intensely beautiful without enhancement. Why would he have any interest in another female body, ever?

 

His fingertips against her thigh are tiny touches, nowhere _near_ enough for the desire humming like electricity beneath her skin. "Then I'm even more flattered," she answers, her own smile soft despite its sharp wickedness. It is, perhaps, even more intensely Irene Adler than the dominatrix's armour, the smile that is at once feminine and genuine but gilded with steel and the promised bite of teeth and whips.  
  
She draws away from his jaw just enough to press her mouth to his, to kiss him deeply, as if she can pull this very moment, the mind that is so much like hers, into herself, to keep with her after they part ways in Moscow.  
  
She does not think about how that has, in some ways, already happened.  
  
"But perhaps I should insist on knowing how your study of mine has progressed," she says against his mouth, her fingers untangling from his to grip the belt around his neck again, with every intention of pulling him to her even though they are infinitely close already.

 

"I imagine you would," he replies against her mouth. He kisses her again, just as deeply, but more slowly. Savoring every moment. He has never been the sort to think about things ending, only to consider them while they are happening. But the Woman, and this? What was and what will be are two very different things, especially now. He intends to take each moment in this holiday as though it were the last, and the same for every holiday onwards.  
  
He moves his hand upwards, tracing fingertips over silk, over areas he knows are sensitive and knows very, very well.

 


	9. Of A Single Mind and Body (Explicit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The promise of the end brings Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes clarity and focus to the sentiment behind their holiday. But is it clarity they will acknowledge or is that clarity a danger to their brittle façades?

His motions are deliberate, as they always are, his mouth moving against hers, his fingers tracing over moist lace and silk. The touch, by all accounts, is a small thing, fingertips against sensitive flesh, but their mutual deductions, the game of wills they have been playing, has set fire to her nerves, has kindled a desire that magnifies every touch and leaves her wanting.  
  
Irene cannot help the gasp he provokes, the sharp wanting breath of air that escapes her, the way her hips move without her own volition to encourage the touch, to seek more friction. "The dress," she murmurs against his mouth, her hand tightening, pulling on the belt around his neck. The word 'please' almost escapes her, the first syllable already on her tongue before she catches herself. " _Now._ "

 

He catches the implication behind the instruction.  
  
"So close to begging already, Woman?" he purrs against her lips. He reaches his other hand up to her wrist, pulling for a little slack on the belt. He wants to move his mouth downwards, to memorize the taste of her and to see how far he can drive her mad before the dress comes off.  
  
His fingers continue to slide up and down and in small, tight circles.

 

His hand closes around her wrist, easing her grip on the belt, and in response she nips at his bottom lip, a quick sharp bite. "Fur and silk," she answers, breathing heavily and arching back to allow him better access to her jaw, her throat, as she tries to hold her hips still.   
  
"Two fur coats, one silk-lined overcoat, against my back in the coatroom. The soprano had just hit the high note in her aria," she continues. He is tremendously distracting, but she refuses to let him win, refuses to let herself beg, instead recalling every detail of that first time they'd come together in Kotor, the smell of gunpowder still lingering on his fingers, his mouth pressed against her center.

 

He nips at her throat, and then traces his lips along her jugular, down to the column of her throat, and then lower, where his fingers touch her. He recalls the chemical compounds of female secretions, and the way the Woman's hormones and body chemistry create a taste of their own, something that is arousing and enticing and entirely her.  
  
John Watson would probably imagine that Sherlock's thoughts were cold, clinical. Sherlock finds his own thoughts to be just on the verge of romantic. If he allowed himself to feel this way, of course.  
  
"You had just been with the daughter in the washroom," he adds, pressing his mouth to her thigh. And again, this time to the silk.

 

His mouth is warm and wet against the silk, and Irene cannot remember the last time she felt the presence of her undergarments quite as keenly as she does right at this moment. Despite her considerable will, she twitches and gasps in response to his ministrations and her hand threads into his hair, to tangle in his curls and hold him there.  
  
"Had I?" she replies, feigning innocence despite the low growl growing in her throat. "She was forgettable. I had more interesting plans after her." She lets go of the belt around his neck, telling herself it is only for a moment, to set her hand over his, guiding his hand back to where he had gripped her by the hip that night.

 

"You're being very flattering," he murmurs. "Should I be worried?"  
  
He hooks his thumb into her undergarments, sliding them down, even as his mouth remains over the silk. Once it is moved aside, he resumes his ministrations, moving tongue over clitoris.  
  
Her body is warm and pliable, and he can feel the way the muscles in her body lay under skin.  
  
He wants her, but in many ways the anticipation is far sweeter.

 

 

She cries out wordlessly in mingled relief and pleasure at the touch of his tongue against her bared flesh, and her fingers tighten in his hair. Her body is tension taut as she tries to hold herself still, as if she can pretend that she is not as affected as she is when every nerve seems to _sing_ with the touch of his hands and lips, when she wants nothing more than to feel him beneath her, to drag bright furrows along his back with her nails.  
  
"I don't know, should you?" she echoes. "If I were flattering, perhaps it's to get what I want."

 

He hums in approval of her words, his tongue vibrating with the sound he makes. The only thing that could be better is to hear her beg for mercy (or, though he won't admit it, to be forced to beg for mercy himself.) His attraction and affection for her is relentless and unforgiving, but no love between them would be anything but.  
  
He moves his fingers towards her, sliding one inside to add to her stimulation.  
  
He will never master playing her as he does a violin, but he considers himself an eager student.

 

His hum carries along his tongue and through her and between that and his deft, quick fingers, Irene finds herself well and truly caught, the sensations he is producing at once too much and not nearly enough. She nearly whimpers as he slides a finger within her, the sensation a counterpoint to the touch of his mouth along her clitoris, and Irene tightens her grip in his hair to pull him to her.  
  
She wants him, she wants this, and she wants him making the same wanting desperate noises he is coaxing from her, wanting him to gasp and plead for her as she is so close to pleading for him.   
  
"Are you expecting me to beg, Mr. Holmes?" she asks, letting go of his hand at her hip to grab the belt around his neck again, to pull him up before her body can betray her again.

 

"Yes," he replies, instantaneously. It is a far cry from the cold, detached way he told her he wanted her to beg back in Mycroft's office, back when she was almost an enemy, someone he thought he'd defeated (but, ironically, it only made her victory all the sweeter when he returned exactly when she needed him to.) Now, his words are deep, thick with wanting.  
  
He feels her hand take hold of the belt at his neck. He won't fight if she pulls him away. He has, at his core, always been at her mercy.

 

" _Please._ "  
  
He is the only person in the world who can draw that word from her lips with such ease and such wanting. Because there is no one else that could keep up with her in the games she plays as easily and as naturally as breathing. The only one who comes close to beating her.  
  
Her body arches into him, craving touch even as she pulls at the belt around his neck to pull him away and up to her. Contradictory directions, but the same obvious desire.  
  
She knows she cannot hide it at this point; her pulse is racing too fast, her body thrumming with need, and her eyes dark and dilated as she looks down at him. And she does not want to. Not right now. Not in death when they are so purely themselves.

 

His fingertips resume the actions of his tongue, touching her, swirling circles against her clitoris, giving her what she asks for. His mouth follows her direction, moving with the pull of the belt until his lips are pressed against hers.  
  
His body _aches_ at her plea. Only the Woman could make him feel this way, and only the Woman could make him _want_ , simply by feeling pleasure. There is no sensation quite like desiring the Woman, and he knows he will never feel this desire without her.

 

She can taste herself on his tongue, and a low laugh bubbles up from between her lips as she kisses him back, as she nips at his lower lip and delves deep into his mouth. She is still far too clothed for her liking; despite his ministrations, her dress remains rucked up over her hips, her knickers... somewhere, she isn't quite certain where at this point and cannot bring herself to care too much, simply that they are not on her.  
  
"I'm going to have to refine my deductions," she murmurs against his mouth, her hand no longer tangled in his hair, instead biting into his back, shoulders, as her nails drag furrows against his skin. "I'm starting to think you'd rather drive me mad with my clothes on rather than take them off."

 

He smiles against her lips.  
  
"I think that's you earning the rest of my clothing."

 

Her voice is breathless and wanting, but there is still steel in her words. "Then off with the rest of them," she growls in return, her hips bucking up against his fingers.

 

He kicks at the leg that still has his trousers hanging off of it, but it fails fairly miserably. Either he has to release her to remove them, or get creative with his positioning. He also can't possibly pull his pants down the way they're positioned, either. At least, not without at least one hand.  
  
"And the dress?" he inquires.

 

She smirks against his mouth as she feels him attempt to kick the trousers away, and she nips at his lip again, harder though still playful despite her frustration. She presses her body against his, fine fabric against bare skin, to emphasize her point.  
  
"Make a deduction."

 

He looks up at her, pressing his mouth against hers as she rubs her body against him.  
  
"We're going to have to cooperate," he says. "Otherwise we're going to remain half-dressed, and that isn't part of the plan at all."

 

She indulges in the feel of him against her for a long moment, in the taste of his mouth, the warmth of his body pressed to hers. But even in indulgence, Irene moves, her hand at his back moving to his front, to trace along his side to reach for the fly of his boxers, to slip a hand in and stroke against the entire length of him.  
  
"Hm... cooperation depends on whether I like your plan," she answers, "Or I could have you right now like this."  
  
Because there is absolutely no denying that she wants him, no denying how much she _needs_ this.

 

It goes against his planning. He wants to memorize every centimeter of her, to focus on touching every part of her---but he can't forget what they've done before, and he never will. This would be a strangely fitting end to the holiday, a circle beginning half-dressed in the coat room in Kotor and ending here, half-dressed in a hotel in St. Petersburg.  
  
He gasps at the touch of her hand against him. He doesn't often want. She is his exception to so many things.  
  
"Do you want me to beg?" he echoes to her.

 

Her answer is a single low wanting word, as much a plea as an answer. The answer she gives him is similar to those she's given to clients time and time again, but only for him is the single word so heavy with desire.   
  
"Always."  
  
She moves again, no longer content to simply dig her nails into him. One hand remains stroking him, following the paths of sensitive nerves she has since memorized, and the other reaches behind herself to unzip the dress that despite her nonchalant words she wants off _now_.

 

He moans at her touch, and at the knowledge of what she is doing, unzipping her dress, finally undressing herself. He long since earned that dress with his deductions, but he'd never argue over winning something so trivial as a piece of clothing (with her, mind. With others? Absolutely. He likes being the winner and having the last word.)  
  
"Please." The word escapes his lips before he can control himself. He lifts a hand up, to lower the strap on her dress, to reveal more of her.

 

She sighs with pleasure at the single word from his lips, the single word that is submission and desire and that from him affects her more than any touch. The very word is a caress, given and taken in proximity, an intimacy she doubts she will offer any other lover.  
  
"Mmm, you _have_ figured out what I like," she purrs in approval, unzipping the dress in one quick motion, and shrugging out of the strap he pushes away. The motion shifts her against him again, all frustrating friction, but it is anticipation now, rather than frustration.

 

"I _have_ been paying attention," he says.  
  
He moves his hand down her back, but all he is met with where the clasp of her brassiere should be is smooth satin. His brow furrows. Not a clasp? He can't imagine something that snug slipping over her head. Where would it clasp? The side? He traces his fingertip over it. No. The front? Ah, yes.  
  
He slips a finger there, examining the clasp.  
  
"Another for the website, I see," he says.

 

Despite the heat under her skin, despite the touch of his fingers against her sensitive flesh, despite the fact that every physical fiber of her wants nothing more than release, Irene smirks in response as his hand runs over her back, over the smooth silky panel where he'd expected the clasp.   
  
She smirks, and laughs low in her throat as she watches his face, watches him reach up for the front clasp to examine it. She is loathe to move, but his study allows her the excuse to, to pull away from his clever fingers and warm talented mouth long enough to pull the dress over her head, to let it fall to the carpet. The fact that it disrupts his study of her undergarments is a bonus.  
  
"Hmm, should I be concerned that you're going to record more than just the details of my lingerie on your website?" she asks, still smirking, as she hooks her fingers into the waistband of his boxers.

 

"Only some things constitute as viable information for a case," he says. "Others are information for my reference only."  
  
She pulls the dress away, and he is reminded that he doesn't need to see her body to know it. At the same time, the sight of it is enticing. Freely given, offered sexually rather than as a domination technique (another enticing situation, though for completely different reasons.)  
  
Her fingers hook into the waistline of his pants, and he places a finger to the clasp at her cleavage.

 

Their games always end this way. She supposes there is no other way for them to end; they are too fond of winning, too rarely losing, to be any other way. She smirks as his finger rests on the clasp again, and kisses him, slow and distracting.  
  
"And what, Mr. Holmes, about this situation is pertinent to a case and what is for your personal reference?" she asks as she eases the boxers over his straining erection.

 

"Make a deduction."  
  
He lifts his hips to assist with lowering his boxers, and he finds the way that the clasp twists. It should be something he could do one-handed. In theory. Perhaps.  
  
He tries, leaning up to kiss her. No success with the clasp. Again. No success.  
  
He can't help but make a face in frustration.

 

She hums, pleased, against his mouth as he tries, fails. Tries again. She runs a finger along the length of his erection before easing the boxers over his hips, pulling them down to his knees to join his trousers in a tangle. He could pull them off completely if he wished. If not, his legs were effectively immobilized and that was fine by her as well.  
  
"I expect this particular snippet won't make it to your website," she answers, letting go of his boxers and resting her hand over his at her brassiere clasp, "Since it would be admitting you need instruction."

 

"I can work it out," he grumbles, though he's grateful for the instruction. He doesn't want another minute to go by, wasted on a piece of plastic keeping her locked in her clothing. He wants her body on his, them together---even if it is going to be the last time.  
  
"Very little of what I've done since I've been away will appear on the website," he says. "Even if it might shock my brother."  
  
He leans up, pressing his lips to her throat.

 

Normally, the front closure was an easy thing to unhook for Irene. But, despite the frequency with which they have indulged in this particular intimacy in the past few months, attempting to guide Sherlock's hand to unhook her brassiere while attempting not to cry out at the touch of his mouth against her throat was hardly _normal_.  
  
So it takes her two tries, to pull the clasp from her skin, to press the left and right parts together and allow the hook to catch and fall away. She barely allows herself a moment to breathe, instead shrugging the now-useless garment off to follow the rest. "Good, neither of our reputations could cope if you did," she answers, purring against the touch of his mouth to the pulse point beating rapidly at the hollow of her throat.  
  
She _aches_ with desire, with need, as she rests a hand on his shoulder, to push him back to the mattress.

 

He can feel her pulse against his mouth, he can feel the warmth of her skin and her incredible nearness, and then, she's pushing him back. He falls backwards onto the mattress easily, looking up at her with a rumpled smile.  
  
"I once believed my reputation extended to you, Woman," he says. "I find I was mistaken."

 

He falls back, and she follows, straddling him and leaning over so that her hair, at some point having lost its pins, falls like a curtain around them. They are too close, too wrapped up in this cocoon and its reminder of Moscow for her to do anything but follow close behind.  
  
"Mmm, now that I wouldn't mind hearing again," she teases with a small smile as she kisses him again, easing her body onto his so that she teases the tip of his erection with her clitoris. "The great Sherlock Holmes admitting he was mistaken."

 

He bucks his hips slightly upwards, rubbing her warmth with his. She is the only person he will admit that has been mistaken to, and he may never do that again. Unless she instructed him to, perhaps. But that is a completely different story.  
  
He moves a hand up to tuck some of her hair behind her ear, to have the light from the room on her face. He has never been attracted to her physically, not really. It is the mind underneath her hair, the brain that moves the body, that is what he desires. Were it possible to stroke her mind with his fingertips, to feel the ridges of the organ that makes her so absolutely irresistible, he would.  
  
"It's unlikely it will happen again," he says, smirking.

 

The gesture is unexpectedly tender, the touch of his hand against her ear as he brushes strands back, the motion allowing light to play along the the planes of his face, the sharp shadows thrown from his cheekbones. And as she looks down at him, the knowledge that Irene has been ignoring, that she has been actively pushing away, that this is likely the last time they will have _this_ , this little cocoon of intimacy, this holiday.  
  
There will be other holidays; they have grown too addicted to each other for anything less, but whenever the next holiday will be, things will be different, they will no longer have the urgency of Moriarty's web with them, there will be a new wrinkle, the knowledge that there is a child that they share. They will still challenge each other, of that Irene had no doubt. But things would be different.  
  
And this is the only time she will admit that she will miss _this_. These moments when they are so purely and utterly themselves.  
  
"It seems unlikely," she agrees, moving her hips down as he bucks up, meeting him halfway, but stopping, still teasing. "All the more reason to enjoy it while it lasts."

 

He becomes fascinated with the way the light moves across her breast, over a nipple. Even the smallest parts of her are beautiful. They've denied each other many things, and teased so long that even now coming together seems an amazingly unlikely event.  
  
That is to say, he spent a long time denying that he had a heart, much less that she could step so easily into it.  
  
She moves her hips with his, but instead of entering her, she denies him again. Teasing him. In retaliation, he moves up to catch the nipple he'd been watching with his mouth, tormenting sensitive nerves.

 

The instant his mouth catches the tip of her breast, Irene realizes just how much he has improved in his studies, how much his deliberate touches and lack thereof have affected her. Pleasure shoots like electricity through the densely clustered nerves in her breast, and Irene dimly notices that she cries out with a gasp, her body arching into his without volition, her hips bucking as she takes him into herself.  
  
Her hands dig into the silken comforter of the hotel bed, and after the momentary fog of sensation clears, Irene decides that is a less-than-productive place for her to dig her nails and shifts her grip from the bed to his body, holding herself above him with one arm, the other hand running along his side, following the line of the knife from Kotor, tracing along the scars their holiday has left on his skin.

 

She is hot. It is something he should have but did not expect about sex with a woman---her body is hot around him. Warm, tight. No amount of experimental masturbation could compare with actually being inside of her, having her atop him, tracing her hands along his body. He doesn't bother hiding the moan of pleasure at her movements.  
  
Her body also has a distinctive taste. It's the taste of her flesh, of her nipple in his mouth, and the way sweat tastes on her skin. He attempts to remind himself that these sensations are, in all likelihood, clouded by sentiment. However, it doesn't matter if they are. To him, right now, there is no better taste than her on his lips, on his tongue.  
  
He'll never tell her this, of course. Her ego couldn't stand it, he imagines.  
  
She is touching his scars, pink and relatively new. He, in turn, lowers his hand to her leg, where her thigh muscle had been torn by a bullet. But it's more than just the physical scars they'll leave with once this is over.

 

His fingers trace along the scar at her thigh, the puckered wound of scar tissue, the traceries of stitches torn and sutures replaced. The scar tissue is not as sensitive as the rest of her, but the tender skin around the wound is, and she knows well enough what he is doing even as she moves above him, as she traces her fingers up the scar along his side to the fading mark of the IV in his chest from the Las Vegas hospital. The rhythm she sets is steady, not the frenzy of white hot need but slower, savouring the moment even as their hands trace over each other's bodies.  
  
The bullet wound affects her still; she expects it will be months before she trusts herself to be fully capable of wearing stilettos again (or longer, depending on gestation). But he will stay for longer, not a physical scar but a presence in her mind, a mental and sentimental ghost curling through her thoughts, lingering in her memory like the smell of cigarettes, like a stray red thread or an edge of lace on a white garment, like an addict's insistent craving. He's changed her, this holiday has changed her, and in ways that could not be measured by physical scars.  
  
She should hate him for that, for changing Irene Adler, but she cannot find it in herself to do so. Not right now, not with him moaning beneath her, his mouth against her breast, his tongue tracing knowingly along the nerves radiating from her nipple, not with the curiosity of what could be, what _will_ be growing inside her.  
  
And she likes it this way. She likes who she is, how she is, in these little moments, even if she will never admit it. His ego would never let her forget it.  
  
She will simply revel in it, enjoy it and move with him even as his teeth catches her hardening nipple and she cries out again, her body arching and clenching against him, every square inch of her primed and wanting.

 

As she clenches around him, he lifts his hips up, deeper into her. He has read of men who feel possessive of women they have impregnated, that they feel they own the women for the child they grow. Oddly enough, he feels nothing of this with her. No possessiveness, no overt protectiveness. He won't see her for a long time after they part in Moscow, this he knows. And yet, he has no doubt she will be fine. She'll thrive on her own, she doesn't need him for that. He wouldn't even feel slighted if she chose to terminate this pregnancy. He wouldn't feel anything but this gnawing, aggravating desire and unwanted affection for her. But, then again, that was there long before pregnancy was on the table.  
  
He releases her nipple and moves his mouth to the other side, repeating his motions again. More slowly this time, more in line with the rhythm she is setting for them.

 

He thrusts deeper into her, the movement causing her to gasp. Her hand is splayed on his chest, against the fading scar of the IV drip, against the bandage covering the bullet wound from London. The thought comes to her like a gasp, that she has scarred him too, that she has left marks on him that are more than superficial, more than even bone deep, that she has carved her name and her sigil in his mind. She refused to think that she has left mark in his heart; to entertain the idea would be to entertain its reflexive response, that he has done the same, and she refuses to think they are matters of _heart_.  
  
She shifts against him, changing the angle of penetration so that every thrust aligns to bring additional stimulation to her clitoris. She gasps as he switches to lavish attention on her other breast, matching the rhythm of her hips even as she ached to speed up, to send them both hurtling over the edge. She wants to cry out, his name is on her lips, but she cannot, will not, be so sentimental, not right now, and instead a torrent of words, of cities, fall from her lips, wanting and needy, like a talisman or a prayer, if one were to be so sentimentally inclined, "Kotor, Las Vegas, London, San SalvadorMontrealTorontoNiagaraVienna--"

 

She changes the placement of her hips, and it stimulates him just that much more. He moans against her breast and moves his body in time to hers. She begins saying the names of the cities, each place its own deviance, its own adventure, its own misbehavior. It is strangely more arousing than any promise of touch or orgasm. It's a pull back into what they've become, this cocoon, this holiday.  
  
He will not tell her he loves her. The thought comes to him unbidden, but it's true. He won't tell her he loves her, because something so sentimental is not them. It's not what they are. Loving her would debase their connection, would turn her into part of a sentimental vein he has no interest in. Love is meaningless and foolish. The Woman is destructive and brilliant.  
  
He moves his lips to her throat, now, and purrs against them as they move.  
  
"And remember all the brilliant ways we _misbehaved._ "

 

And with that single sentence, with eight words, he shatters her completely.  
  
For them, it has never been about the physical. The physical, the sexual, has always followed the mental, the intellectual. And even now, it is the memory of their time together, the recollection of their holiday and their misbehavours, that sends Irene over the edge, the mental stimulation that pushes her body into physical shuddering orgasm. Her nails dig into his chest, into the fine heavy sheets, as she remembers all the ways they have tangled into each other all the ways they have won and lost and won again on their holiday. And as her mind shudders with memory and pleasure, so does her physical body, as she clenches around him, as her body milks the length of him to prolong the wave of roiling release that washes over her, that floods her brain and blood with endorphins and hormones and a venerable drug cocktail that leaves her weak and aching and satiated.  
  
She cries out and nearly falls on top of him with the force of her orgasm, her body shaking and still deliciously sensitive as she shudders and moves against him, urging him to the same climax that leaves her wordless and breathless.

 

As she orgasms, as she moves along him, her body tight and her heart pounding, he remembers every time they were together---the coat racks in Kotor, the hotel in Las Vegas, the handcuffs in London, the car in Toronto---all of the times he saw her in varying stages of pleasure, varying stages of _herself_. What they have had has been far, far more than just a series of sexual liaisons spattered in between dangers and pain. No, they've lived their own lifetime in this short existence of their own.  
  
And throughout it, he has willingly given her a piece of himself each time. His mind should recoil at the thought, but the idea of her, the Woman, standing victorious over him, holding all the little pieces of his mind he thought he kept safe, is _beyond_ sensual.  
  
 _This is how I want you to remember me._  
  
He cries out as he orgasms, wrapping his arms around her.

 

The pounding of her heart, the thundering of her breathing, rings loud in her ears with the fading echo of his cry as he shudders against her, as he spends himself within her and it is another minute, maybe more, before Irene realizes she has fallen against him, her cheek resting against his shoulder, her lips at his clavicle, and that his arms are wrapped around her, his body warm with the flush of orgasm, with the quickly growing cool of sweat and the rapid flutter of his pulse against his skin.  
  
She doesn't pull away, instead letting her eyes flutter close for a moment, breathing deep, her breasts pressed against his front, her thighs twinging with post-coital strain. She doesn't move, and for a moment this feels utterly ordinary, that they are simply lovers tangled in each other holding onto each other as weariness creeps up on them like sea mist.   
  
"This is how I want you to remember me," she finds herself saying, her lips against his throat, her eyes still for the moment shut, reveling in the touch of his hands against her back, against bared skin. A quiet laugh. "Not _just_ staring up at the ceiling of my flat. But all of this."

 

"How---?"  
  
His heart is racing, endorphins rushing through his body. He nearly asks her how she knew what he had been thinking. Which is ridiculous, of course. Her mind moves in similar directions to his. She had been thinking it because the situation called for remembering times together. First times.  
  
He moves his head, pressing his lips to her hair. He smiles. A small, private smile. Ordinary people, Jim had told him, were _boring_. This moment is something one could consider ordinary. And yet, it was them, and they were far from boring. And he was... _happy_. The simplistic and almost juvenile word covered all of the bases he needed. Warm, comforted, safe, satiated, and----and just--- _happy._  
  
"I had hoped to remember you nude in Louboutins."

 

She refuses to think that she is anything as mundane as _happy_ in this moment, but she is certainly, rarely, _content_. And the soft laugh that his words coax from her is content, is rare and genuinely pleased. She doesn't move to look at him, simply reveling in the touch of his lips against her hair, the way they are moving in tiny unseen touches and smiles invisible.  
  
"I expect you to handle both. First impressions and more essential ones," she answers, the hand that had been curling into the bed sheets now resting against his hair.

 

Her touch is tender, their position intimate. Even their words are full of sentiment. If they were now who they had been months ago---even at just the start of their holiday---this would have never happened. They would never have trusted each other for a sentimental touch, much less an embrace.  
  
Right now, even back at 221b doesn't seem as pleasant as this does.  
  
"And me?" he asks. "How will you remember me?"

 

She presses her lips to his shoulder, and she wonders idly if he can tell that she is smiling as she does so. She doubts he can see that her eyes are heavy-lidded as well as dilated, that the last of the dominatrix's armour had been left on the ground with her clothing.  
  
It shouldn't be, but Moscow awaits and this is the last chance she will have to discard it. She will don it again when they leave St. Petersburg, and once Moriarty's web is fully hers, there will be no opportunities to shed it, even on holiday.  
  
"The slack-jawed consulting detective stunned into silence at the sight of my battle dress," she teases. It is, if not her very first impression of him, certainly her favourite of her firsts. Another press of her mouth against his throat. "The one lover I've had who has made me beg."  
  
The only one who could make her consider losing an advantage.

 

He has his own armor, his own blocks and shields, but she's pulled them away from him. She's disarmed him, she's made him vulnerable. She's made him _lose_. She is his only lover, and he imagines she always will be. He doesn't see any reason to seek out anyone else. Ever.  
  
"You're the only one worth losing the game over," he says. He thinks of Karachi, where he gave in completely, admitted how deeply she dug under his skin.  
  
He presses another kiss, this one to her forehead. "I probably shouldn't forgive you for that."

 

She laughs softly at that, and only then does she realize that her eyes had drifted shut at some point. She blinks them open again, but does not look at him, does not pull herself away to observe him. They are both used to seeing too much in a look to be comfortable with that knowledge in their moments of intimacy.  
  
She does, however shift and continues tracing her fingers along the shoulder wound that had landed him in a hospital in Nassau. "You shouldn't," she agrees. She rests a finger against the scar tissue, a light warm touch. "Because I'm not repentant."

 

"I certainly hope not," he replies.  
  
Part of him wants to look at her. Wants to look into her face and see the chemistry there. The dilation of eyes, the shape of her nostrils, the turn of her lips. He wants to know her. But part of him will always want the mystery, want the white question marks that will hang over her forever.  
  
It is better that they are parting, he tells himself. This way, she will never lose that mystery.  
  
"I don't love you," he says, voice quiet.

 

She doesn't wonder at his statement. It simply _is_. One of the simultaneous truths and lies that tie them together.   
  
"No, you don't," she agrees. "And I won't love you." She rests her head against him, feeling him warm and solid beneath her, the thud of his heartbeat beneath her ear and hand, the rapid beating of earlier slowing as their bodies catch up.  
  
It is a reminder to him as much as to herself. That love is too sentimental for either of them, that while he may believe himself incapable, she actively chooses not to.   
  
There is something in that. Something that she won't consider too deeply.

 


	10. Second Thoughts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the light of day, Moscow and all it represents looms large, and both Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes reconsider just what they have become.

Irene does not recall falling asleep, though the slow surfacing of her consciousness informs her that she did, at some point in the night, make the conscious choice to move from tangled limbs to now-tangled sheets and feather pillows. The feel of silken sheets against her skin reminds her that she is in a hotel, and the thought of the hotel allows her mind to navigate the fog of sleep to remember St. Petersburg. Her body is pleasantly sore, with the weariness that only physical satiation allows, and the bed is indulgently warm.   
  
She stretches, the motion disturbing the covers, bringing in a breath of cool, air conditioned air, and Irene instinctively shifts back under the covers, against the warmth between the sheets, curling up against a warm body that only a few seconds later does she remember belongs to one Sherlock Holmes.  
  
A spark of thought suggests she pull away, to curl back in on herself if she must sleep, best to rise and dress, but most of her, that part of her heavy with exhaustion, the part of her that is a body changing, that _is_ a body exhausted, informs the rational thought to shut itself up and let her sleep, curled up warm and content.  
  
And so the spark of thought dims, its ember for once fading rather than to be caught ablaze.

 

He's not one for sleeping often, but when physically exhausted (spent, as it were), he has found that he sleeps particularly well. And now, surrounded by the smell of vanilla and patchouli, he has no desire to rise at all. His face is near the Woman's hair, he realizes, and one of his arms is around her warmth. Fingers touching her wrist in sleep. Feeling her pulse.  
  
Moscow.  
  
It's all lead up to this, hasn't it? The knowledge that they would eventually go there. That the holiday would end. Today is that day. He finds he dreads the idea of rising even more. What harm would a few extra minutes of sleep mean to the two of them, at any rate? They will leave, it's essential that they go. But for now, no, now he'll just---  
  
He shifts his head, moving it closer to hers, and closes his eyes. She smells like the holiday smells. She smells like sexuality and femininity and danger and all the things he has come to find mean _satisfaction_. He lets himself drowse.

 

She is vaguely aware of the weight of his hand against her wrist, as a cocoon of warm and even acceptable _comfort_ as she drifts back into a light doze. The last coherent thought she has is the knowledge that she will wake up alone, that he will no doubt be watching by then.  
  
When she stirs again, the bed is still warm beside her, his weight still causing the mattress to dip, to let her rest against him, her arm draped across his chest. By now, the sun has risen high enough that it is bright even behind closed eyes, and Irene knows there is little time left to prolong the inevitable. Moscow awaited, after all.  
  
She takes a deep breath, and a small smile pulls at her mouth at the faint smell of cigarettes that mingles with the last lingering traces of her perfume, that will always remind her of Sherlock Holmes. She opens her eyes then, expecting that he is already awake, and either insufferably smug or irritated by the way she has claimed his body as the perfect resting place for her arm in sleep.  
  
She is surprised to find that he is, in fact, not already awake and watchful. The small smile becomes a soft, almost affectionate look as she blinks the fog of sleep from her eyes, and she moves her hand from where it is draped across him to brush back a dark curl from his face.

 

He feels the brush of her fingertips across his face as he emerges from sleep.   
  
He would often say that he doesn't dream. Dreaming is not something that is important, and he doesn't believe his subconscious is capable of dumping information, only his conscious mind when he works at it. At the same time, if he were to allow himself the concept of dreaming, he might admit that his subconscious worked up him sitting and eating breakfast in Baker Street with the Woman, as she explained to him why John was gone.  
  
Finding her in his arms, safe in a hotel room away from his life in Baker Street is equal parts comforting and disappointing. One more stop. They have one last place to go.  
  
Her fingertips are on his face, and he finds himself mimicking the motion, lifting up his hand to brush her cheekbone with his forefinger.

 

His fingertip against her cheekbone coaxes her smile just a touch wider and Irene exhales with a quiet laugh. She almost does not want to speak, does not want to break the fragile, unexpected warmth of the morning, the pleasant surprise of waking up and watching him shake off the shroud of sleep, watching the way conscious thought steals and plays across his face.  
  
"Good morning," she says eventually, her voice low, still rough with sleep. "I was beginning to wonder if that once time in Montenegro was an accident."

 

He raises an eyebrow. His own voice is a little rough, just waking. "I vaguely remember last night, you listing the cities that prove it certainly _wasn't_..."

 

She laughs then, her fingers resting lightly against his cheek for a moment before she pulls her hand away. "I meant my waking before you," she reminds him. Her eyes gleam. "Though I was impressed that your weapon of choice for defending yourself from a stranger in your hotel room was the bedside lamp."

 

He shrugs, just a gentle lift of his shoulder. "It would have been effective."  
  
More or less. He'd been...startled by the presence of the man in the room that morning. Less startled once he realized the man was, in fact, the Woman. The Woman and her brilliance with disguises. They were, after all, a self portrait, and he still didn't recognize her.  
  
He thinks about future holidays. He'll need to make certain to practice his own.  
  
"Though in retrospect, I might have used the bedside table instead."

 

Irene laughs again, and stretches, cat-like, among the tangled sheets with a pleased sigh. "If you had, I'd have never let you forget how bothered you were by my disguise," she informs him.  
  
A part of her expects this little moment to be shattered by a call on the hotel room phone. Or perhaps by someone breaking down the door. But until then, she plans to indulge herself.   
  
Moscow awaited, after all.

 

Part of him wants breakfast. Part of him wants a cigarette. Part of him wants a shower. A greater part of him wants to remain in this bed and not think about leaving.  
  
He chooses this part of himself. After all, he'll have to go back to London, back to being himself, soon.  
  
"Bothered? I was not bothered. It was a dangerous time."  
  
He traces his finger down, running it along her shoulder.

 

His finger is cool against the warmth of her shoulder, and his touch sends a pleasant shiver, a memory of the previous night's activities, down her spine. Irene shifts on the bed, rolling to her side to prop herself up on one elbow, to watch him more closely.  
  
" _Was_?" she asks, raising an eyebrow. Still, her voice remains teasing as she watches him, her hair a loose, mussed tumble falling down her back, the bed sheet carelessly slipping from her body. "If I recall there were six assassins chasing us just yesterday."

 

"Was that yesterday?" he replies, shrugging. "I've never been one for keeping track of the days."  
  
He is being coy, he knows. He continues to trace his hand down as the bed sheet moves from her body.  
  
"And as it is, we handled them fairly well, I'd say." Six assassins, only a few civilian casualties. He'd call that a success.

 

She does not pull away as his finger continues to trace along her body, instead still watching him intently. The mention of the assassins has reminded her of his intent in bringing them to her to begin with, the idea of a gift before they part, before their holiday is truly over.   
  
It is dreadfully sentimental, and by that very fact Irene is loathe to indulge it, but she cannot deny that it would be fitting.  
  
"I'd be inclined to agree. As long as they were the only ones who saw the medical records they found." She is, despite her words, still relaxed. She doubted their now-dead pursuers had had either time or inclination to report back, judging by the state of their cars when she'd burned the document.

 

He pauses his finger as he nears her abdomen. The medical records brings to mind the information he learned the day prior. The bundle of cells in her body, multiplying regularly, growing into something else. Something that would be partially her and partially him. She would protect the child from assassins and dangerous killers, he would work to protect it from Mycroft. Because Mycroft would want it, no matter what it was.  
  
"Are you certain?" he asks. "That you want this?"

 

She freezes as the path of his finger draws closer to her abdomen, and he asks the question. She has two choices here, to pull away, to leave the question unanswered, or to lie, because she is not certain of the answer.  
  
The urge to pull away, to draw the dominatrix's armour around herself again, is instinctive. But the thought of Moscow stops her, the thought that this is the end of their holiday, barring later ones, different ones, after the Inconvenience is born.  
  
She does not pull away, instead resting her hand on his, pulling it away from her abdomen and into the space between them as she twines her fingers with his. "Aren't you at all curious? My brilliance and your cleverness?"

 

She doesn't pull away, and for that, he's grateful. He doesn't know how to breach subjects like this, he just talks to her about it. At least it isn't ending this intimacy. He rather enjoys it.  
  
"My brilliance and your techniques with deception," he agrees. "At the same time, it will change your life. Whatever he becomes."  
  
Because, naturally, Sherlock's first thought is that the cellular bundle probably has a Y chromosome attached to it.  
  
"It hardly seems right, leaving you with...a burden."

 

"'Leaving me with a burden,'" she echoes. She gives him a deeply skeptical look with a single raised eyebrow. "And exactly how often have you successfully managed to leave me with anything I didn't want?"  
  
She does not wait for an answer to that question, instead rolling back onto her back, looking up at the ceiling and the play of sunlight against the plaster. A small smirk touches the corner of her mouth. " _She_ 'll be an experiment."

 

"Yes, we should discuss that," he says. She rolls onto her back, and he moves his hand, now tracing it across the front of her stomach.  
  
"What, exactly, are the limits of experiments I can run on him? This is a rare opportunity."

 

The feel of his hand tracing along the plane of her stomach is not unpleasant, it's almost comforting in its own way, and Irene cannot help the little of irritation at her own thoughts that bubbles up. Domestic, nearly.  
  
She does, however, turn her head to look at him at the question. "Experiments would require observation," she says, her voice carefully blank. "Are you implying you want to be _burdened_ with a child?"

 

"Intermittently, for experimental purposes," he admits. "In the same way that I'm occasionally burdened with E coli in a petri dish, or a vat of drosophila."  
  
That was a disastrous day, because John did not understand where ten thousand fruit flies came from when he accidentally opened the jar. Luckily, the number that were infected had already died. Mostly.  
  
"Unless you'd prefer I didn't."

 

Her initial response is somewhere between offense and amusement, that he would consider The Inconvenience something on par with a petri dish of E. coli, but it quickly fades to something like confusion as she considers his next words.  
  
 _Unless you'd prefer I didn't_.  
  
And that brings to mind that despite her plans, despite the contingencies she has developed for this sudden complication, that Irene had not once considered what she _wanted_.  
  
She had, in her mind logically, assumed that this would be an experiment that would be hers alone, despite the obvious falsehood of that, genetically speaking. She had never once assumed Sherlock Holmes would wish to be _burdened_ as he put it, until now.  
  
For a moment, Irene looks contemplative, thoughtful, as she considered the implications of his words. "I won't have our holidays become _family_ holidays," she finally says, her voice disdainful for the very idea as she meets his eye again. A shrug. "But I suppose Baker Street might be a more sensible place for her if I have certain business arrangements to conduct."

 

His nose crinkles at the thought. "I can hardly stand Christmas dinners with my parents, let alone with you." The last is, of course, teasing. Christmas with the Woman and whatever experiment she brought with her would be miles more interesting than time with his parents and brother.  
  
"We can arrange something, I think," he says. "Something to avoid Mycroft's involvement completely."  
  
And John's. Not that Sherlock doesn't believe John would be trustworthy, but this...well, Sherlock privately likes the idea of this arrangement, like their holidays, to be about _them_ , not about the life he has waiting for him in London.

 

A slow, unexpected warmth diffuses under Irene's skin at his agreement, a pleasure she had not expected, not had known she'd wanted. That their holidays would remain theirs, that The Inconvenience would also remain theirs in a different way.  
  
Sentiment. She reminds herself that once they reached Moscow that this would no longer do. That they would be the dominatrix and the consulting detective again.  
  
How fortunate that they weren't yet in Moscow.  
  
"And I expect her to be returned in the same condition. Physically and psychologically," she informs him. A quirk of her lips. "No poisonings until she is at least fourteen."

 

"I can determine his weight and body type so that poisonings shouldn't, in theory, have any lasting effects," Sherlock replies. "And I'll give him some light reading. See if desensitization towards murder would have a psychopathic effect on a child's mind, or if it might make it more interesting to study."  
  
He's not even certain if he's teasing on that point. It would be a great psychological experiment.   
  
What a strange family they'll be. Family. What an odd word to use to describe himself, the child, and the Woman. Family, to Sherlock, always meant irritation; disgruntled obligation. This appears to be something he might...actually...enjoy.

 

"Fourteen," she repeats. It briefly occurs to Irene that _other_ people would not have these conversations, that the very idea of poisoning their own child as an experiment would be repugnant.  
  
But they were not other people, and Irene had no doubt any child that shared their genes would be unlike other children. Still, the idea is too domestic, too _familial_ for her tastes and she laughs quietly, letting her fingertips trail along his shoulder, resting on the still healing scar from London.  
  
"I suppose I'll never be able to have business conversations within her earshot, will I? You'll hear about them as soon as she can talk."

 

"Unless you teach him how to lie," Sherlock replies, easily. "You are far better at that than I am."  
  
This is, in fact, a compliment. He is an excellent liar, but the Woman is far more skilled.  
  
"I assume offering you monetary assistance for him would be insulting," he adds. His family has always been wealthy, and Sherlock has always believed in purchasing things worthy of his time, so giving money to help the Woman raise the creature makes sense. At the same time, there is nothing Sherlock could offer her that she could not readily acquire herself. It is part of what makes her so---the word _wonderful_ comes to mind, but is completely incorrect for the Woman. Wonderful brings to mind fluffy bunnies and ridiculous notions of love. No, the Woman is far better than all of that.

 

"If I wanted money, I'd extort it from your brother in the most humiliating way possible," she informs him without hesitation, her expression one of utter distaste at the idea.  
  
It is not simply a matter of pride, though there is no small amount of pride in it. But even before Karachi she had promised herself that she would make her way in the world again, that she would not allow herself to live on someone else's sufferance, even if Sherlock Holmes were hardly anyone else. That it would not be simple sufferance either.  
  
But pride was prickly, and the pride of an extraordinary mind even more so.  
  
Her fingers linger on his shoulder as she considers moving, rising out of bed and making use of the shower, to sluice away the traces of their sentiment as if it were some residue that clung to her skin like the scent of sex and sweat.   
  
"I don't _need_ you," she continues quietly, her eyes on his. "I won't have any of this be an obligation."

 

"And what if I tell you that I do?" he inquires. "Need _you_ , that is."  
  
He looks up, staring at the ceiling. Sentiment, he tells himself. Idiotic notion, that. At the same time, the sensation of having her in his arms is warm, comforting. He finds himself already looking forward to the holiday that they haven't even planned yet.  
  
"The concept of needing another person is ridiculous, of course. Necessities rarely relate to another person or their well-being." Backpedaling. "But...if I were. What would your reaction be?"

 

She is extraordinarily glad he is looking at the ceiling when he asks the question, extraordinarily glad that he cannot see the look of surprise on her face. Because there is no easy answer, no simple answer when they have fought sentiment for so long.  
  
And his question is sentimental, as would be her answer. And Moscow awaited.  
  
Irene is quiet for a long moment, rolling around words in her mind, tasting them on her tongue, before she sits up, turns to rest her feet on the ground. It is easier to speak when she cannot see him, when she is not risking him seeing _her_ expression when she speaks.   
  
"If you were," she says carefully, an almost vulnerable fondness in her voice. "I'd tell you that the consulting detective doesn't need anyone. That alone protects him." A quiet laugh. "I'd tell Sherlock Holmes that he needs a dead woman as much as she needs him." She looks over her shoulder at him, her dark hair tumbling down her back, a stray hairpin that had not been removed still clinging to a lock of hair. The look on her face is vulnerable, fond, though she tries to keep both emotions at bay.  
  
"And neither of them should admit it."

 

He keeps his eyes on the ceiling, though he can feel her move near him, sitting up, pulling away. He thinks he must have said something wrong, but then she speaks, and he becomes certain he's said something wrong. He has no ability to understand emotion, much less express it. She must understand that. Or, perhaps, she does. Perhaps that is why she is telling him that the dead woman needs him as much as he needs her.  
  
"In all likelihood, Woman, I won't live to see my fortieth birthday," he says. It's not pitiful, it's not dramatic, it's simply _true_. "In three years, you're going to be far too busy to worry about needing anyone."  
  
Much less him.

 

Her hand twitches with the the urge to slap him across those cheekbones, but instead of indulging she rises from the bed, letting the rumpled sheet fall where it may. She turns back to him, her arms crossed beneath her breasts, and gives him a flat look.  
  
"Any plans you have to _experiment_ with the child would require more than three years to come to fruition, so I suggest you be less resigned to the inevitable," she informs him tartly. A pause. "Besides, if you insist on being right in this case, I'd send the child to your brother's care at your funeral."  
  
Perhaps, because she does need him as much as he needs her.

 

He turns his gaze from the ceiling to the nude Woman standing before him.  
  
"Is that a _threat_?"

 

She smirks, unrepentant, in response.   
  
"At your funeral. He'd see the child as a second chance in the midst of his grief."

 

He goes from his prone position to standing in less than two seconds. He moves in front of her, immediately into her space.  
  
"You wouldn't _dare_."

 

His proximity and his height is meant to intimidate her, she knows. But she would hardly be the one Woman who mattered to Sherlock Holmes if she were so easily intimidated.  
  
She simply straightens her spine, her shoulders squared, and meets his eye. There is absolutely no laughter there, just a soul of steel and resolution.  
  
"Are you certain enough to bet your life on it?"

 

"I'm not going to change my lifestyle because you're threatening our unborn child in the wake of my death," he says. He leans in towards her, just a little.  
  
She's so unbelievably _attractive_. A slice of power and intimidation. It's difficult to not be distracted.  
  
"I'm only speaking logically."

 

She will not be intimidated by him. She simply will _not_ , no matter how much he attempts to loom over her. She raises her chin, the motion bringing her closer to him even as he brings himself closer to her.  
  
"And I'm offering the logical conclusion. Whether you want to prevent it is your affair."

 

"Neither of us trust Mycroft, and you know as well as I do that Mycroft will only try to disrupt whatever you have planned for him," Sherlock retorts. "If you spitefully thrust him into Mycroft's arms upon my death, you're only submitting him to unnecessary warping."

 

"Then I expect you'll court death a little less vigorously," she answers tartly, ignoring his physical closeness and instead turning on her heel, the motion causing her hair to whip back, to hit him in the chest.  
  
Without another word she heads for the washroom.

 

He leans in, just as she whips around towards the washroom. He is aware, vaguely, of the fact that he is actually significantly aroused, and not merely due to blood flow while asleep. But that is the Woman, isn't it? She brings him emotions he doesn't want when he least expects them.  
  
She also just spent the last few minutes attempting to convince him to be more careful. A threat with Mycroft was much more inventive (and possibly more effective) than simply saying she wanted him to stay alive.  
  
He follows, leaning against the door frame.  
  
"We could avoid Moscow," he finds himself saying, unbidden. "Take a trip to Sydney."

 

She runs water in the shower first, allowing it to warm up before she steps into the stall, and is standing in front of the mirror, running a comb through her tangled hair when he speaks. She stops, surprised, and looks in the mirror at him, her lips twitching in a small, pleased smile as she notices his state of arousal.  
  
She finishes running the comb through her hair before turning to face him, leaning against said counter as she does. "And then what?" she asks, "Perth? Bangkok? São Paulo?" She sets the comb down on the counter before continuing, a soft smile on her lips as she tilts her head, studies him with her usual intensity. "Go back to Baker Street, Mr. Holmes, before incubation makes me completely intractable."

 


	11. A Delay of the Inevitable (Explicit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With daybreak comes the promise of Moscow and the inevitable end to their holiday from death. But can Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes really walk away from each other, or will they make excuses to remain, to linger, despite themselves?

"I'm assuming you mean in comparison to now," Sherlock replies. He shakes his head. "It would simply be a delay of the inevitable."  
  
He gestures in her direction. "Not merely a delay of my return to Baker Street and you to your plans, of course. Our tiring of each other, which is inevitable. We're both far too 'intractable' in our own rights, and statistically any sort of romantic liaison has a 75% chance of ending in complete failure. The greater delay we put on that, the better. Particularly for the---new development."

 

It is pure sentiment that warms her at his words, more for what he does not say than the seemingly callous words. The acknowledgment that he does not want whatever it is they have to end. The fact that he is, at least scientifically, interested in The Inconvenience. The fact that he wants to delay the inevitable dissolution of their liaison.

Still, she allows herself to be warmed by it even as she objects. "Romantic liaison?" she repeats, pulling herself away from the counter and crossing the small distance between them to stand in front of him. She did not look down, did not have to, to draw physical attention to his state of arousal, that they both knew had little to do with _romance_ in any sense.

"What if I told you I refused to accept your failure rate because I refuse to accept this is any sort of romantic liaison?"

 

"Holidays don't have the same statistical information," he replies. He reaches up, touching a lock of her hair. He shouldn't, he tells himself. It lends too much credence to the idea of this being romantic. Of _them_ being romantic.  
  
"What would you call this, Woman?"

 

She does not move, either into or away from his hand against her hair. She does, however, continue to watch him, to study him with pale, knowing eyes that nevertheless are the slightest bit dilated.   
  
"An intellectual affair," she answers. Her lips quirk into a small, wry smile. "Or perhaps a growing addiction."  
  
Certainly, she feels as if she is addicted.

 

"There are some who would try to stop it," he replies. His own pupils must be dilated in response, he thinks. It has never been her nudity or even romantic gestures that have aroused him, it has always been her intellect. Her mind is her most attractive feature, and he imagines that will never change.  
  
"Your water will get cold," he warns.

 

She tilts her head, as if momentarily surprised, his words reminding her of why she had come into the washroom to begin with. Certain she had far more interesting things in front of her at the moment than the steam seeping out of the shower stall and into the washroom proper.  
  
Still, at the reminder, she eyes him, her gaze sweeping over him from head to toe, before she nods at the shower. "Then perhaps you should join me."

 

He raises an eyebrow. He imagines very little in the realm of actually washing will take place if he showers with her. After all, they're both mildly aroused, and he imagines that being nude and close in warm water won't diminish that.  
  
But what does it matter? This is the last day of their holiday.  
  
"I'm not letting you wash my hair," he warns, teasingly.

 

His lack of clothing makes it difficult, if not impossible, to pull him with her with any sort of satisfaction. Still, Irene merely smirks and rests her fingertips against his chest, the amethyst ring on her finger winking in the diffusing light.  
  
"Of course not," she answers with a wicked smirk over her shoulder, breaking away to step into the warm steam and spray. "Besides, I have far better things for you to busy yourself with than your hair."

 

He follows because he never had any intention of _not_ following. There are few things more inviting than a hot shower after the last few days, except perhaps a hot shower containing the Woman.  
  
He wonders, idly, if this is why John thought it was strange when he'd offer to conserve hot water by sharing a shower. The sexual implication never occurred to him until this moment.  
  
He steps into the stall as well. The warm water sprays over the Woman, and touches the side of his torso.

 

She slips into the shower stall and its spray of warm water with a sigh of pleasure, though perhaps one less throaty than the night before. Still, there is a sensual pleasure to hot water running over her skin, and her body obviously relaxes as she steps under the spray.  
  
He follows steps behind, much as she expected he would, and Irene moves closer to the shower head, giving him room within the relatively spacious stall should he wish to indulge as well. She lets water run through her hair, soaking the dark length of it, before speaking.  
  
"You may not be interested, but _I_ have half a mind to insist you wash my hair," she informs him with a teasing smile, water coursing down her body, sluicing away the remnants and clues of the previous night.

 

He doesn't understand. "Would I, somehow, be better at washing your hair than you are at washing it yourself?"  
  
While he is not a romantic, he does, however, take note of how incredibly sensual she is in the water. He regards the shampoo (eight months old, purchased in bulk by a Bulgarian with an eating disorder) sitting on the shelf.

 

"Not at all. You'd be guaranteed to be worse at it," she answers lightly, turning around to face him. She runs her hands through her wet hair, carefully pushing it back from her face to trail down her back.  
  
She smirks at him, all challenge and feminine amusement. "The question is, are you more interested in proving me wrong, or more interested in resisting that I've made you done anything at all?"

 

He picks up the shampoo. This is all very idiotic, he thinks. And yet, he loves the feel of her hands in his hair when they are in bed together. He also loves the way her hair feels in his hands. This is just a much more practical application of the gesture.  
  
"What would you prefer?" he inquires.

 

Her smirk deepens, and she takes a deliberate step closer to him, rivulets of water running down her body. "You've had more than enough time to study," she replies, a touch of huskiness in her voice. "Surely you've figured out some inkling of what I like, Mr. Holmes."

 

"I know what you like to do to me," Sherlock responds. He reaches up, tracing her jaw with his fingertips. "But you should tell me what I should do to you. Anything you want."

 

A shiver of anticipation slips down her spine, utterly at odds with the warmth of the water, the heat of their bodies, and the promise in his words. She considers his words, considers the weight of them, the _possibility_ in them, and a slow smile begins to unfold on her lips, at once anticipatory and predatory, hungry and wicked.  
  
She rests a fingertip against his sternum, then two, and walks them up up his chest as she speaks. "You will wash my hair, and my body," she informs him slowly, her eyes locked with his, each word rolling off her tongue at once savouring and sharply precise . "And _if_ I'm pleased with you, I will allow you to have me against the tile."   
  
She flicks a seemingly careless hand to gesture at the washroom, though the motion is uncanny in how it flicks water right against his chest. "After all, the acoustics in here are excellent."

 

He finds himself smiling. It's annoying, all this smiling he's doing around her. He can't help it, which is also annoying. He gives up, and allows himself the smile as he unscrews the top of the shampoo.  
  
"Might need to wash your back again afterwards," he says. "If I do well enough, the tile will be filthy in comparison."  
  
He puts a small dollop of shampoo in his hand. No. She has more hair than he does. A little more. A little more.

 

Irene finds herself smiling in return, even though her demand insists she should be stern, implacable. But that shiver of anticipation has pooled in the pit of her stomach, turned to an ember of smoldering heat, and Irene watches as he considers the bottle of shampoo in his hand, squeezing hesitant dollops into his palm.   
  
She chuckles, and steps into his space again, until her breasts are all but pressed against him, close and utterly distracting as she rests her long-nailed fingers along his hips.  
  
"We'll see then, won't we?" she purrs.

 

He leans down, gently brushing his lips against the edge of her neck as he raises his hands up to her hair. He thinks about how he likes his own hair washed---gently, just a slight massage, and attempts to duplicate this with her.  
  
"I suppose we shall."

 

He is hesitant at first, no doubt attempting to duplicate familiar motions from an unfamiliar perspective, and Irene's eyes flutter close when his fingers begin massaging her scalp, and she hums her approval as his hands work towards the base of her skull.  
  
"The ends as well, Mr. Holmes," she murmurs, opening her eyes again just wide enough to look at him from beneath thick eyelashes caught with droplets of water.   
  
She has to remind herself not to move her hands, to let them sit light and tempting at his hips, though she cannot resist digging them shallowly into his skin, leaving small crescents that fade in seconds rather than the deep furrows she has marked on his back.

 

"Mmmm," he murmurs in agreement. Her hands are warm at his sides, as warm as the water in her hair. This entire act, the whole of it, feels like an indulgence. Like eating a large meal, or sleeping for an extended period of time; it's all something he doesn't need and shouldn't want. He shouldn't want to feel so pleasantly domesticated next to her.  
  
He also shouldn't be so easily swayed by the idea of sexual intercourse in the shower.  
  
Her nails dig into his hips, and he takes in a breath. "I don't think I'll be seeing showers quite the same way again."

 

That coaxes a laugh out of her and she eyes him with a look of utterly false innocence on her face even as her fingernails run along his waist.   
  
"Won't you?" she asks, that same pleased smirk on her lips. "I'm certain you possess enough self-control that any memories will prove less than... distracting."  
  
It is a blatant lie, its obviousness expressing exactly what she thought, that she fully hopes he'll be distracted by the memory after their holiday is over, as another mark she leaves on him.

 

"I won't be distracted," he replied. "I'll simply remember."  
  
He is rarely distracted (or so he tells himself). He will not become one of those people who thinks about nothing but their lover, or sex in general. He certainly has no intention of wasting his time with something as useless as masturbation. But at the same time, he will...remember this. All of the holiday, including her nails digging into his hips as he runs his hands through her soapy hair.  
  
"Lean your head back into the water."

 

There is no need or reason to fight his instructions, because they are simply part of his obedience to hers, so Irene complies, taking a step back and tilting her head back into the spray. At the same time, she does not break contact with him, drawing him with her in that step.  
  
"This won't be slated for deletion?" she teases, closing her eyes again to prevent soap from running into her eyes. Her hands trace circles and unseen sigils into his skin as the water does its work. "You are becoming quite the flatterer, Mr. Holmes. Or am I simply a bad influence?"

 

"Deleting you would be as difficult as deleting London," he says. "Consider that a compliment. I consider London essential."  
  
He watches the line of her neck as she leans her head back. A stream of water moves down her jaw, and down the column of her throat. He should focus on cleaning, focus on doing as she instructs---but then again, if he always did as she instructed, they would bore each other immensely.  
  
He moves forward as she pulls him, and leans his mouth down, tracing his lips over the line on her jugular.

 

As essential as London. The very thought pleases her, sends another slow-burning tendril of desire down her spine, the admission that she has in fact marked him as indelibly as he has her.  
  
She should have expected him to not simply _obey_ , because they are neither used to obedience, but the surreal domesticity of the moment lulls her. So when she feels his mouth along the line at her jaw, following the rivulet of water, she gasps in surprise, her fingernails digging into his hips, before the gasp becomes a purr, a low throaty sigh of approval.  
  
"Now you're being wicked. But you won't distract me so easily."  
  
Though she is, slowly, becoming more distracted by him, by the play that is unfolding between them.

 

"Mmmm, far too forward, perhaps," he admits, taking a quick nip of her neck before pulling back. "After all, we have all morning." Don't want to rush things, he thinks.  
  
Except he does, in some ways. He wants to be at Moscow, to get it over with before he digs himself any deeper into the pit of sentiment that is the Woman. She makes him want to wait, to distract, to take their time. She makes him _want_ , which is irritating.

 

Something in her clenches in disappointment as he pulls away, at the sudden lack of contact, and that makes her laugh even as she pushes away the implications. That he is so easily able to make her _want_ , that he has so quickly learned how to draw desire from her with so simple a touch.  
  
Though, it has never been the simple touch that drew her to him, nor him to her, but everything that preceded the touch, the game that they played with words and intellect and pride like crossing swords and brandished blade.  
  
It occurs to her that Moscow cannot come soon enough, that she needs to shed this entanglement, to lock away their pleasant holiday as little more than an aberration. As something to revisit years down the line but not to cling to her as she takes over Moriarty's web, as she makes her way in the world with surety and resources.  
  
Yet she finds herself lingering, the nipples of her breasts hardening as they brush against him, as her fingers dig into his hips and the water sluices the last traces of shampoo out of her hair.  
  
She forces herself to let go of his hips, to slide her hands up his body and along his arms until she holds his wrists. She pulls them from her hair, untangling his fingers from the long wet locks as she pivots within the circle of his arms, her water-slicked body brushing his intimately until she stands with her back against his front. She lets go of his wrists then, and picks up the complimentary soap and a washcloth.  
  
"And how much more morning is there?" she asks, "We lingered in bed, after all."

 

"Morning time is really just an interpretation of the time after sleeping, open to cultural influences and variations in scheduling, as well as personal preference," Sherlock informs her, leaning down to press another kiss to her neck. He slides his hands down her side, and he vaguely wonders if this is what other lovers do. _Normal_ lovers who take a shower and have a lie in in the mornings, and don't think about the end of their holiday until it's already upon them.  
  
His hand moves to hers, where the amethyst ring still sits. His wedding band, purchased so long ago, still sits on his left hand. He'll remove it, soon. Return to the life of an uncaring bachelor. This is for the best.

 

His mouth against the thin skin of her neck is a far too pleasant, far too familiar sensation, and Irene leans back into him at the touch even as she looks down at his hand sliding over hers, at the wink of the gold wedding band, still new but with tiny telltale nicks in the gold to mar its original polish, and the amethyst ring on her finger.  
  
She reminds herself that once this holiday ends, the ring should be removed, locked away, compartmentalized, no longer a reminder of this cocoon of sentiment like spider's silk they've caught themselves in. But then... The Inconvenience has already changed her, would change them both. Could the traces of their sentiment be as easily hidden away as the ring off her hand, the hand that had felt strangely empty when she'd removed the ring just days ago?  
  
At the very least, once her right hand had healed properly, it would return to that finger.  
  
She turns her wrist just enough so she can press the soap into his hand, even as she remains firmly pressed against him, front to back. "And your personal preference is for morning to end whenever you've decided you're finished, I expect."

 

He runs the soap up her arm to her chest, then down her torso in ineffective, soapy lines. She makes him ineffective. She makes him want and desire and slow down and the case becomes secondary and---and---  
  
John Watson would say he's in love, but he would be missing the point of this, of all of this.  
  
" _Finished_ is also a highly interpretable word," Sherlock murmurs.

 

She smirks as he begins running the soap ineffectively along her body, though within moments the smirk melts into a pleased smile as she lolls her head back to rest against his shoulder, her eyes fluttering closed to better concentrate on the feel of hot water against her skin, his body slick and warm and familiar against her back.   
  
Their holiday will be _finished_ in Moscow, she wants to say, but it will not, because they had already admitted to wanting holidays after this, because of the thing gestating within her that is equal parts theirs... No, their holiday will not be finished, nor will they be with each other.  
  
"Not _finished_ then," she murmurs back, tilting her head far enough to be able to nip at the curve of his jaw, the spot just beneath his ear. Her wet hand runs along her chest, soap clinging to her fingers as she continues, running her hand along his side, nails raking up his arm. "Perhaps simply 'ready to no longer indulge for the time being'."

 

Ready. Yes, he thinks he should be ready to give this up. This simplicity, this distraction. This _diversion_ should be enough and he should be ready to move on.  
  
But her hand against his side is warm, as warm as the water running over their bodies. His brain supplements the desire to have both---both London and the Woman. It would never work, of course. She would not fit in with the life he's left waiting for him. And he, in turn, would stand against everything her web from Moriarty meant. They would also tire of each other, of course they would. Too much indulgence, like his last overdose, would lead to a distaste for what they were indulging in.  
  
Of course, he eventually came back to morphine. That's not the point.  
  
"I won't miss you," he lies.

 

She can taste the lingering trace of salt on his skin despite the water running over them as she traces the curve of his jaw with her mouth, a curve she expects she can follow without looking, and there is something utterly ordinary in that, even as it is in itself extraordinary. After all, how many people could say without a shadow of a doubt that they knew exactly the curve of their lover's jaw, that they would be able to reproduce it if necessary?  
  
Not many. Two, she thinks.  
  
"Good," she answers. She knows it is a lie, because they will miss each other, because they have admitted as much in the words they dance around. The thought of waiting for him to continue swirling soap over her body is for the moment overtaken by the desire to face him, and so she turns again, her water-warmed front now against his as she looks at him.   
  
Her eyes are heavy-lidded, pupils dilated, water droplets clinging to her eyelashes, as she regards him. "People in romantic liaisons miss each other," she reminds him. "Addicts don't."  
  
No, addicts _needed_ their addictions.

 

"I'm not an addict," he lies again.  
  
He leans down, kissing her quickly, desperately. Because, deep down, he is an addict, always will be. Always hunting for the next case, the next high, the next thing that keeps him going. And _she_ for all her manipulations and secrets and vicious layers he can't read, _she_ is far better than any high. A simple argument with her is far more satisfying than any sexual tryst with another person could be.  
  
He needs her. Another fix, another holiday later, _yes_ , but she's created this addiction under his veins he both adores and hates.  
  
But such is the way of them, isn't it? Adoration and hatred. Very similar emotions.

 

Her initial response is trapped by his mouth against hers, by the quick, fierce kiss tasting of heat and desperation (or perhaps that is only her own) that is like a cresting wave. She kisses him back, catching his lower lip between her teeth, nibbling at the thin skin as she steps further into his space to pin him between her and the cool, slick tile.  
  
How long the kiss lasts before she surfaces is debatable, a heartbeat or a lifetime, it hardly matters as her right hand threads into his hair, her left gripping his hip and leaving behind tiny red crescents.   
  
"You're a terrible liar, Mr. Holmes," she declares against his mouth, the words little more than a low murmur, carried utterly by nothing but conviction.

 

The tile is cold against his back, like a sliver of ice, but the Woman is warm in his arms, and significantly more diverting. He hisses at the pain of her nails against his hip, at the feel of her hand threading through his hair.  
  
"I leave the lying to you, Woman," he replies. "You're far better at it than I."  
  
Admission of this level is almost too sentimental for him, and there's a flicker on his face of self-frustration at this realization. It's true, however. No lie could cover that.  
  
"After all, I was promised that I would have you up against the tile."

 

His hiss is like heroin or morphine or some other drug in her blood, though no simple drug could be so effective. Her lips, free of blood red lipstick, curl nevertheless in a sharp smile and her nails run along his scalp as she pulls his head to her, her body keeping his pinned.  
  
"But only if you performed to my satisfaction," she reminds him, her hand on his hip tracing parallel scratches until her hand is between them, and she first runs a light finger along his length before teasing at her own entrance with a self-satisfied purr. "And you've hardly done _that_. I've had to take matters into my own hands."

 

A low groan comes from his throat at her pull. He moves willingly as she pulls his head towards hers, his lips open in anticipation of another kiss.  
  
"If only your selfishness weren't one of your more admirable traits," he teases. "I might claim that I wasn't given enough of a chance."  
  
He traces a hand upwards, to cradle one of her breasts, to tease her nipple with a fingertip. Gently, delicately. Nerve endings are more sensitive with her pregnancy, more active. Excellent.

 

Once her pregnancy had been revealed, the heightened sensitivity of her body made sense, became painfully _obvious_ , and between their play, the warm water and his light, teasing touch at her breast, Irene cannot keep herself from gasping in response. The only thing she can do to keep her shuddering reaction from being embarrassingly intense is to kiss him again, to press her mouth to his parted lips, to trap the near-whimper between their mouths rather than letting it take flight.  
  
"If you claimed you hadn't been given a proper chance," she eventually manages to answer, her fingers thoroughly tangled in his wet hair, "I would remind you that I expect far more than _ordinary_ compliance from Sherlock Holmes."

 

"And who's to say I didn't expect the same from the Woman?" he replies, nipping at her lower lip. "After all, I'm not one of your clients."  
  
And she, of course, is not one of his. Nor will she ever be. The Woman stands on her own. Above every other woman on the planet. He leans down to kiss her neck again.

 

She gasps again at the bite, the sensation like a jolt of liquid fire down her spine, her head falling back, exposing her throat for his renewed exploration, and despite the pleasure slowly suffusing her limbs, Irene is of the mind that this is utterly unfair, that it will simply not _do_ for him to have her at so easy a disadvantage.   
  
Even as she threatens to come undone at his touch, she runs her thumb along him, the touch of her hand warm and water-slicked, her fingers follow a vein that runs along the length of him before her fingers continue moving to cup his testes, feeling the nerves and blood vessels lurking beneath the thin, delicate skin.  
  
"You'd be far less interesting as a client," she agrees, fingers teasing, cupping, occasionally running along the length of him again. Her eyes flutter close, to better focus on the sensations he is provoking from her body and the ones she is drawing from him, and possibly so that she would not see his reaction to her next words.  
  
"If there is one strand of Moriarty's web you could prune in Moscow before we part, would you?"

 

He sucks in a breath at the feeling of her fingertips across his length, and then the light, airy sensation as her fingers touch against his testicles. The sensation runs down his thighs, and seems to sap all of the blood from his legs, leaving his toes tingling, even with the gentle touch of her hands. Sexual contact is so intriguing and consuming, he thinks. It's a wonder anyone can get anything done. He once had a murder victim who had been receiving oral sex while driving, and the very idea seems _mindbogglingly_ impossible, considering Sherlock can hardly focus on just teasing the Woman's breast and tasting her neck while she touches him.  
  
"I can think of one that would require a partner," he admits.  
  
Appropriate, really. That's how this all began. A thread to snip where he needed someone on his arm.

 

His admission should not provoke such warmth in her, should not make her feel so pleased, so utterly _sentimental_. It shouldn't, but this is the end and perhaps that is enough reason to indulge in the moment of sentimentality.   
  
Her fingers linger against his testicles before she rings two fingers around his arousal, applying light, teasing, steady pressure as she works the length of him. Her fingers in his hair pulls him from her throat so that she can nip at his earlobe, trace her tongue against the curve of his ear as she presses her body against his, pinning him against the tile.  
  
"A female partner?" she purrs, knowing the answer, knowing he will say yes, because there is no one but them in Moscow.

 

He lets out a long, low moan at her actions, from the touch of her fingers to his arousal, to the tug of her hand in his hair and her mouth on his earlobe. She knows him, now. She knows all of the touches, and she can play him as well as he can play any violin and she can read him as he can read a crime scene. The time apart will be good, he will be fresher, newer. She will have to learn new things. He will make certain that she will.  
  
"The gender of the partner is irrelevant, you'll be perfect for it," he says. There is no one but them in all of Moscow, for all he cares at this moment.

 

His low moan settles under her skin, a wanting warmth coiling at the base of her spine. She will not love him, love is too sentimental, too much a weakness for them, but she _glories_ in this, in the way he bends to her sharp pains and her bites and her commands, in the way the cold facade of the consulting detective falls away, at the way she can break him of it.  
  
And a little part of her thrills at the knowledge that he can do the same to her.  
  
"I disagree," she retorts, nipping at his earlobe again, at once playful and admonishing. "The fact of my gender when I'm your partner is _very_ relevant."  
  
She is, after all, the woman who'd beat him. And he is the only lover she will take who will have had her so intimately.

 

" _You_ ," he breathes, the word equal parts addressing the Woman and admonishing her constant teasing with her teeth. "Exemplify the whole of your gender."  
  
He moves his head against where she pulls his hair to lean his mouth towards hers, to brush his lips against hers.  
  
"Are you expecting me to beg?"

 

Her lips curve into a pleased smile as his lips brush hers, and she catches his lower lip between her teeth, another light teasing scraping touch.   
  
"Of course," she answers, letting go of his lip as quickly as she'd caught it and trailing her mouth along his jaw, down the curve of his neck, until her mouth hovers over the rapid pulse beating just under his skin. She continues stroking him, varying the rhythm, now, alternating lingering strokes with light touches.  
  
"And that admission was an _excellent_ place to start, Mr. Holmes."

 

He lowers his own hand down from her breast to her thigh, to between her legs. It is wholly unfair, he decides, that he is the only one who is being tormented in this moment (though, he has no doubt, this is exactly how the Woman prefers it).  
  
"You will be my master assassin," he says, voice hitching as her fingers stroke. "And I the extremely well-connected millionaire with a grudge."

 

She smirks against his shoulder as she sucks at the thin, tender skin there, marking him, as he lowers his hand. She does not swat his questing fingers away, nor does she pull away, instead shifting her hips to allow him better access. After all, she has every confidence that she can make him beg before he do the same.  
  
"Mmm," she purrs, her own rhythm along his length slowing as he touches her, moving in counterpoint to his. "So I'm to play the Moran to your Moriarty? You'll have to beg for me to accept _that_ proposal."

 

"And miss the opportunity to play against some of Russia's most dangerous politicians? To walk into the very heart of the Moscow underground? You wouldn't miss it," he replies. She strokes a sensitive spot on his tip and he gasps.  
  
He strokes a gentle line across her clitoris, then a circle, then again up, and another circle. A series of lines and circles that mean nothing but pleasure to the Woman, or one would hope, at least.  
  
"After all," he purrs. "I know what you like."

 

There is a part of her mind that files away the patterns he is tracing against her clitoris, that would look for hidden meaning and secret codes drawn against her skin, but that part is drowned out by the low throaty sigh of pleasure that he wrings from her. It is not simply the touch of his fingers against sensitive nerves, but his words and their promise of a challenge.  
  
He is playing her like his violin in this moment, coupling physical pleasure with intellectual stimulation, with the reminder that he has, in fact, learned very well exactly what she liked. He is, effectively, turning the tables on her, and both the knowledge of it and the act itself sends a shudder of molten pleasure up Irene's spine.   
  
Her fingers falter for a second against his erection, and her hand loosens in his hair just enough for her to move her hand to his shoulder, to dig her nails into his skin even as her hips move against his clever, conniving fingers.   
  
"And what makes you so certain it will work?" she demands, crushing her mouth to his, kissing him deeply, heated desire on her tongue as she kissed him hard enough to bruise.   
  
Never mind that it is working, and quite obviously so.

 

"For the same reason you know this works," he says, only breaking the kiss long enough to speak before he kisses her again. Too long until their next holiday. Not long enough until their next holiday. Too soon they're parting. Not soon enough.  
  
They are an exercise in compliment and contrast. In desire and disgust. They would never function in the long term, and yet he can not see them parting for an extended period. Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler are absolutely meant for each other and never to be all at once.  
  
He puts a hand to her hip and moves closer to her. He wants her to pin him to this tile wall. He wants to beg. He wants her to beg.  
  
He caves first.  
  
"Please."

 

She sighs and it is almost a whimper, almost, at the 'please' that falls from his lips. Because she had been close to begging herself, with his fingers stroking her clitoris, his words teasing her mind. She had been desperately close to succumbing, but he falls first and she can now follow without admitting her own weakness.  
  
She does not think about how being here, now, tangled in each other, that this is already her weakness.  
  
She presses herself, warm and water-slicked, against him and kisses him again, parting his lips and tasting him as she loosens her grip on his shoulder, her hand now pressing him against the cold tile. There is a low ledge in the shower stall, she recalls, wide enough to serve as a bench, to sit and soak in the water, and she turns him a quarter turn, forces him to take a step back until his calves came in contact with the cool tile ledge.  
  
"Sit down," she commands, unable to keep the needy hitch out of her voice.

 

He immediately does as commanded, and is greeted by cold tile against his buttocks and testicles. He hisses in a most ungentlemanly fashion.  
  
"I should've expected that," he says, attempting to regain composure.

 


	12. The Purest of Addictions (Explicit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To linger is dangerous, because every moment they linger is another link in the chain of sentiment that ties Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler together, a chain that they must sever to go their own ways, and each moment they deny it makes the inevitable more difficult. But then, misbehaviour and doing things that are detrimental to their individual well-beings has been a hallmark of their holiday from death, so what is one more encounter?

The smile that spreads across her face at his reaction is razor sharp, pleased and merciless all at once, but Irene barely indulges in seeing his discomfited, though she files the moment away. Instead, she steps close, straddling his thigh as she touches a bare fingertip to his throat, to where she'd plucked a false priest's collar from his neck lifetimes ago.  
  
She is as close to him as she had been that day, and she pauses a moment to revel in their mutual positions again. Though this time she intends for it to end quite differently.  
  
"Yes, you should have," she answers. She traces her nail along his throat, and hums low in hers, her eyes dark and heavy-lidded as she looks down at him. "Should I remind you that we're both defrocked, Mr. Holmes?"

 

He looks up at her, and his smile is very different from the shocked, naked look he had when she had straddled him that first time. She will always have him at a disadvantage, but now, well, now he enjoys it.  
  
"Only if you plan on using it to your advantage, Miss Adler."  
  
It's strange, calling her by her given name. To him, she is the Woman. The epitome of all things feminine, the eclipse of her gender. She is the one Woman who truly matters to him.  
  
He puts a hand to her hip, and raises the other to her face.  
  
"Look at those cheekbones," he murmurs. "One could cut themselves."

 

She moves to kneel on the cool tile ledge, straddling him properly and allowing him easier access to run his fingers along her face. She is centimeters above him, still deliberate and teasing, not satisfied to immediately lower herself onto him.  
  
After all, he was right, that she planned on using her position to her full advantage.  
  
Her own fingers trace up from his throat, following the curve of his jaw to run along his cheeks, along those cheekbones, mirroring his touch.  
  
"Oh but it'd be an enjoyable experience," she counters. She lowers herself onto him, nearly sitting in his lap but her entrance only still teasing his arousal. "Would you like me to try?"

 

From this position, he could easily move himself up into her. But he doesn't want to take control, not now. Not with the Woman in control of this, owning this moment between them.  
  
And she is beautiful, isn't she? Her hair in wet ringlets around her face, her skin clean and shining in the light of the shower. A goddess, if the very idea of a deity weren't something absolutely ridiculous that Sherlock found to be a complete waste of time. But he could worship the Woman. Briefly and defiantly, mind, but he could.  
  
"Yes," he says. "Please."

 

His please is as good as begging, a second please a second plea. Because with him the simple, single word is enough. With him the surrender is in a single word, not in drawn out begging, not in a hundred kneeling words of submission, in the precise detail of what is to be done. It is, as all things tend to be with them, at once breathtakingly simple and yet complex, to give up power and to trust in their own mutual intellects, in their own abilities to deduce what each other _liked_.  
  
A slow, sinful smile spreads over Irene's face, and she sets both hands on his shoulders, running her nails down his arms in concurrent paths as she lowers herself onto him, taking him one deliberate millimeter at a time as her nails rake down his arms until her fingers lingered at his wrists, curling tight around them, pulling his arms up, carefully, against the tile wall.  
  
Her smile grows then as she pins his arms above his head with her hands, and she begins to move against him with slow, steady rocking motions.

 

She pins his wrists against the cold, wet tile, and he lifts his hips in time to her deliberately slow rocking. She knows what he likes, and he likes the challenge, the diversion. He likes that sex is more with her than just what he believed sex was---the in and out and oh look there's an orgasm or something. No, with her, sex is an _experience_ , each and every time.  
  
He lets his head roll back, resting it against the tile. He closes his eyes and feels nothing but her. Her, the Woman. The Woman, the one Woman who matters.  
  
No lover will ever compare to this. Never again.

 

Her grip tightens on his wrists as he lolls his head back, as his eyes close and his hips falls in time with hers. Her expression temporarily hidden from him, Irene indulges in a long look, her eyes wide and dilated as her gaze sweeps almost hungrily over him, pinned and vulnerable.  
  
Something in the pit of her stomach clenches, and Irene knows she will not be able to forget the sight of him like this, no matter how hard she tries. Still, she only indulges in that thought for a heartbeat, before she switches her rhythm, her hips moving quicker, with shallower, teasing, less satisfying thrusts.  
  
She catches his earlobe between her teeth again with a sharp warning nip.  
  
"You look far too comfortable."

 

As her thrusts become shallower, he lifts his hips to try to regain the satisfaction from before. She is infuriating. Maddening. She does it on purpose, and he loves it. She nips his ear, and he gasps. He can't fight back, can't bite his nails into her hips, can't hold her down. He wouldn't want to.  
  
"And you, far too in control," he counters. "But neither of us truly wants the other to be out of their comfort, would we?"  
  
He turns his head to brush his nose against hers. "And I wouldn't know what to do with control over you, Woman."

 

She laughs, a low rough gasp against his mouth. "No, you wouldn't," she agrees.  
  
He attempts to shift his hips, to bring her back to the rhythm his body wants, and she turns her head to nip at his lip, another small pain and pleasure, a tease, nothing more.  
  
She tightens her grip on his wrist, the motion requiring her to arch her spine slightly, to pull her lips away from him, the tips of her breasts now closer to his mouth as she ensures that her grip holding his wrists to the tile is firm, secure.  
  
"But I expect you'd experiment thoroughly, _if_ you were ever given the chance."

 

She holds onto his hands, but he has some leverage, having access to her very sensitive breasts. He takes immediate advantage of her breasts' proximity, moving his mouth to her nipple, suckling, and then biting down, gently. She teases, he reciprocates.  
  
Would he experiment if given the chance? If she allowed him complete control over her, at least sexually, for a brief and secure time? If given that power with no real experience outside of this Holiday, would he take that opportunity?  
  
" _Obviously._ "

 

Another gasp, this time slipping into a liquid purr at the feel of his mouth against her too-sensitive breast. Given her proximity, his state of arousal, and their relative positions, it had been the only possible reaction he could have had, and liquid pleasure slides down Irene's spine at the proof that she had been right.  
  
She does, after all, know what Sherlock Holmes likes. Very very well.  
  
But her response is not to loosen her grip on his arms, because it is too easy, too quick a reward. Instead she moves against him again, thrusting deeply again, taking him completely but at a painfully slow rhythm. Satisfaction in one sense, denial in another.  
  
Her lips curl into a smug smirk as she does. "The question remains whether I'd ever give you the opportunity."

 

He lets out a low hiss against her breast at her words, and the motion of her hips. Deeply but slowly. She is warm and wet and she contrasts him and compliments him in so many ways.  
  
"Of course you would," he says. "You would want to see what would happen."  
  
He moves to her other breast, mimicking his actions from the first. Suckle, a bite, and then a lick.  
  
"I know what you like."

 

 _That_ earns him a wanting moan, the throaty sound echoing off the tile walls as she speeds up the motion of her hips. Not enough to drive him over the edge, but enough to adjust, to bring her additional stimulus.  
  
It is, perhaps, astonishing how little physical touch they are allowing each other. Her, limited to rhythm and pressure against his arousal, he, limited to his mouth against her breast. But then it has never been about the simple, physical sensations that aroused them, that brought them to the edge again and again. It is always the mental stimulation that caught them first, the intellectual challenge, the grudging emotional intimacy.  
  
The physical stimulation merely echoed the rest.  
  
"You're starting to," she admits, though to Irene's ear, the teasing understatement loses its force with the breathless, wanting note in her voice. "But I see what you're doing. Trying to entice me to another holiday sooner rather than later."

 

"You think I want a holiday so soon?" he says, lifting his hips up, his own voice sharper and just a shade more desperate with the sound of wanting in her voice. "I can wait as long as I need to."  
  
Except, he didn't want to wait at all. He wanted her to never leave. He wanted her like this, and he wanted London at the same time.  
  
"I think it's you trying to entice me."

 

"Am I?"  
  
He moves to meet her with his own thrusts and the rough, desperate desire in his voice is another thing branded into her memory. Her hands slide over his wrists, not to let go, but to twine her fingers with his, still holding his hands above his head as their rhythm quickens, as she presses herself close to him, to press her mouth against his.  
  
She kisses him with desire and desperation, bruising and wanting all at once, because she wants _this_ , she wants them as they are, she wants to be Irene Adler again, and she wants Moriarty's network as her own. And her desires cannot stand together but she wants them all despite that crystalline knowledge.  
  
Her mouth is still against his when she speaks, her words little more than a gasp between them. "And how enticed are you, Mr. Holmes?"

 

 _Not at all_ , he wants to say, showing her his own ability to lie. He knows she likes to lie with him, and they like to play the game.  
  
_Desperately,_ he also wants to say, telling her the truth. He knows she likes knowing her influence over him, and he can't help but enjoy the moments of vulnerability with her.  
  
Instead, his body pushes him towards climax, the feeling of her mouth against his, her body moving with his, her gasping words.  
  
"I'm---I'm going to---"

 

He is coming undone beneath her; she can hear it in his words, feel it in his body beneath hers, knows it because she is perilously close to becoming undone herself. And she adores it.  
  
How something as physical as an orgasm can be a race, a game, between them.  
  
Her body moves with his, matching his rhythm, driving them both towards the inevitable surrender. Her fingers are twined with his still, and her grip tightens, holding him there as the only thing holding _her_. Her lips part his, her tongue tasting him, her own orgasm building as she kisses him deeply again.  
  
Hips, hands, mouths.  
  
"Come with me," she says, and it would have been a command if not for the word that follows, that falls unbidden from her lips. " _Please_."

 

Implication of the word _with_ shows strong correlation that she, too is nearing orgasm. His own proximity is making noticing these things more difficult, because he is wrapped up in pleasure. The pleasure of them, of this, of her body pinning his to the tile, of her fingers twined with his, holding his hands above his head, of the tingling in his arms from lack of blood, from the way his heart is racing---she does these things to him, and he can't control himself. He doesn't want to.  
  
And then she demands. No, begs. But how close are those two things to each other? How close are they to each other?  
  
He holds out. Leans up to press his mouth to hers, desperately. Moves his hips in time to her rhythm. Waits to come for her.  
  
_Obeys_ and yet _gives_. Again, how similar they are.

 

He is holding on, delaying himself as her own control slips away, as she _feels_ it slipping away by her fingernails, as the building orgasm crests, crashes over her and her entire body clenches and shudders with pleasure. She wants to hear him cry out, wants to feel him shudder and climax, but all she can hear is her own voice, her own cry low and throaty as she loses control, echoing along the tile. All she can feel is her own orgasm, pleasure triggering a chemical flood into her blood and brain.  
  
A part of her is aware that she has somehow lost in this little game of theirs, that she has lost control before him, even as her blood pounds in her ears, as she tries to catch her breath, hearing the ragged cry from her throat echo back to her. Even then, she knows she has lost but cannot find it in herself to care too much about it.  
  
She is resting heavier against him now, her fingers still locked against his, no longer forcing his arms up but merely holding them there because that is where hers are and she does not want to move. She kisses him again, even as every movement of her hips against his sends another aftershock through her body, threatening to send her tumbling over the edge again.  
  
"Now. _Please_."

 

She's begged twice, now, and that---that _means_ something between them. That begging, that number, and hearing her cry out, feeling her body clench around him. It's too much and it's everything.  
  
He thrusts upwards, orgasming as she begs and commands, crying out against her neck as pleasure shoots through his body. His every nerve is on fire and it's her, her, _her_.  
  
Irene Adler. The Woman. The one Woman who matters, the only Woman who matters.  
  
He presses a kiss to her neck.

 

He cries out against her and it is like a burning brand against her skin as he thrusts up into her, knowing he obeys even as she gives in, as she submits. The knowledge, combined with the physical sensation of his orgasm, with the feel of him thrusting into her, the motion stimulating already sensitized nerves, sends her falling again as another orgasm washes over her, her entire body clenching in the unexpected tide of pleasure.  
  
For a moment she feels almost blinded by sensation, by the feel of him beneath her, by the feel of his lips against her throat, her heartbeat racing and her throat almost hoarse from crying out.  
  
She lets her hands fall from their raised position then, her fingers still twined with his as she rests her forehead against his, her breathing rapid and ragged.  
  
There were so many things she could say, but most of them are drowned out by her own heartbeat racing in her ears. "Twice," is all she manages.  
  
She expects him to take that as he will.

 

He finds himself smiling. Orgasming twice in a row, or begging twice? Did it matter which she meant?  
  
"I noticed," he murmurs.  
  
His own heart is racing still, and he wraps his arms around her waist as she releases him. Such an intimate gesture should not be something he wants, it shouldn't be something he _needs_ , and yet here they are. Delaying the inevitable as long as they can. Holding onto each other.

 

They are not sentimental individuals. They refuse to be, and yet here they are. Indulging in absolutely unnecessary, frivolous (though extraordinarily satisfying) sex, making plans for one last trip in Moscow... Putting off the inevitable just another day, another hour, another minute.  
  
But his arms wrapped around her waist feels content, feels right. She does not return the favour, not in something so physical, at least, though she remains leaning against him, her forehead against his, her eyes fluttered closed.  
  
"I do lie better than you," she murmurs, not looking at him. Her fingertips run along his side, as if her hands cannot abide being empty, being idle. "When I said I didn't need you."

 

It feels as though she's broken some unspoken rule by admitting to the lie. Of course she was lying, of course he was lying, but they don't _admit_ it. They don't admit it, they don't---they don't show what they feel, because it makes it tangible, it makes it a problem. It becomes as physical and as life-altering as the life growing inside of her. And he can't. He can't change his life to suit a problem like this. An inconvenience. She may be able to change herself around it, she may be willing to hold onto this bundle of cells that will become a child, but he would go and abort it immediately.  
  
At least, that's what he tells himself.  
  
He can't need her. He can't love her. He can't want her. She can't understand that these are things he simply _can't_ feel. He's spent his whole life preparing himself mentally to avoid all of these things, to purge himself of unnecessary emotions, to become a machine that doesn't feel human error.  
  
And then, there she is. Surrounding him, holding him. Her body, pressed warm against his. Surrounding him, warm and wet and sexual. The desire to his deduction.  
  
"Love is a chemical defect found in the losing side," he says, and his voice is his own, the way he prefers it. Cold. Calculating. Spoken without emotion and with the power of a machine that knows itself.  
  
His next words are less so. "I've never lost before."

 

His words, echoing that night when her world had fallen to pieces, are like ice water running through her veins, and for a moment Irene freezes, her fingers stopped in their motion against his side, her shoulders suddenly tense at the potential of the terrifying realization that this entire holiday had been nothing but a ploy--  
  
And then, the four words that are a confession, that puts lie to the rest.  
  
Irene hates that she relaxes then, that her fingers rest again against his skin, that she sighs a bitter, self-deprecating laugh at her own reaction to his words.  
  
She opens her eyes then, and pulls away just enough to press a kiss to his forehead, a physical gesture as close as she could give his mind. "If you've lost, there'd have to be a winner," she reminds him. "And you've made it quite obvious that it isn't me."  
  
She draws one hand away from his side, instead tracing her thumb against his wrist and up his forearm, following the path of a vein, of a phantom track mark. "Addicts need their drugs of choice, Mr. Holmes," she reminds him, her voice little more than a breath, barely audible over the still-running shower, almost a plea. "They don't have to love them."

 

He finds himself smiling, despite this. Despite the situation, despite how vulnerable and childish and idiotic this all feels. She's giving him an _out_ , offering him an excuse, a way to not admit---this. All of this. Because admitting it makes it tangible. Makes it real.  
  
He pushes down the desire to ask her to come to London. He doesn't love her like he loves John Watson. He could spend every waking moment with John and never tire of him. John is like an alternate side to him, an opposition that makes him whole. The handle to a knife that makes him usable. She is the whetstone that makes him sharper, smoother, more effective. He needs her and wants her and can't possibly have her all the time. They'll eventually wear each other into nothingness. And the Woman, well, she would tire of London. She could never live life in one room forever. This is how the two of them are so very different.  
  
"You are the Woman," he says. "The one Woman that matters." He lets out a little huff of a laugh. "I never referred to heroin as _the_ heroin. Even when it was pure."

 

He manages to be both contrary and complimentary at once, and it is the contradiction that makes her laugh, that shakes the unease from her mind, at least temporarily. She kisses him then, all slow exploration.  
  
"Better than heroin, am I?" she teases. It is easier, to fall back into their patterns, rather than to continue down the path of landmine sentimentality. "I'm flattered."

 

"The come down is far easier, if nothing else," he says. He kisses her again, allowing himself a moment of indulgence, to just enjoy the feel of her mouth against his. They can't stay like this for much longer, he knows. His erection is nearly gone, the water isn't going to stay warm forever, and Moscow looms in the next few hours. But he'll be damned if he isn't going to linger as long as he can.  
  
"I believe you're far more dangerous," he says.

 

She smiles again, pleased, against his mouth before pulling away, before rising on her knees to draw apart from him, to return to the still-warm water, to rinse off the last traces of their sentiment from her body before Moscow.  
  
"Far more dangerous and addictive," she purrs, setting her feet back on the tile, now warmed by the still-running water. She arches an eyebrow at him. "Now, tell me about this mark in Moscow. It's the last bit of Moriarty's web you'll get from me."

 

She pulls away, back to the water, and he remains sitting on the tile, watching her. Part of him doesn't want to rinse this away, this vulnerability feels too raw, too _important_ , and yet he feels he needs to. He needs to become the machine in order to finish this, in order to go back to London.  
  
The knife can't function correctly without the handle, after all. And his handle has existed alone in London. His whetstone is preparing to leave. He can leave, too.  
  
"Leader of a ring of human traffickers," he says. "Fifty-six, unmarried. Uses his influence to send girls under the age of sixteen to America to get 'married', and ends up setting them up into prostitution. Jim Moriarty was acquiring him both clients and aliases."

 

Irene's lips thin as she listens to his description of the mark. She will not tell him that she approves of his choice, because Moriarty's network will be _hers_ to command, not his to prune, but she is pleased by the choice nonetheless.  
  
She steps under the water and picks up the soapy washcloth again, methodically rubbing soap onto her skin and rinsing it off. "We can get close as potential clients then," she says. "The madame of an establishment in America and her investor?"  
  
She makes quick work of her own body and offers him a hand, to pull him back into the water with her.

 

"Assassin and multimillionaire," he says, sounding slightly annoyed. "That was the original plan."  
  
He looks at her hand. He should take it. He should wash off this. He reaches up and wraps his fingers around her wrist. He doesn't really need the assistance to his feet.

 

"Ah yes, the Moran to your Moriarty," she murmurs with a laugh as his fingers close around her wrist. Her own fingers wrap around his, and she steps back under the spray, drawing him with her.  
  
She is too satisfied for touches to be sexual at the moment,but she draws him with her into the water, and she stands close to him as she begins scrub at him with the washcloth, to sluice away this vulnerability before they find themselves _too_ weakened by it.  
  
"How could I have forgotten?" Though her tone was obvious, that she had not, in fact, forgotten.

 

He watches the way her hands move with the washcloth, cleaning his skin. Her long nails, the folds of skin over her knuckles. She is fragile, and yet as strong as steel.  
  
"You prefer the investor and madame," he says. This isn't a question, of course.

 

Her fingers run along his skin tracing the soapy cloth's progress. It is an indulgence, to simply touch him, and the simple, sentimental task of washing is an act of aftercare she would never have allowed a client.

But then he was not a client.

"Are they mutually exclusive?" she asked mildly, a smirk tugging at her lips. "Your vindictive man playing the investor, his assassin playing the madame. Two disguises at once. It'd be a challenge."

 

Oh, a challenge. A spark flies to Sherlock's eye at that. He likes a challenge. Oh, but he does like a challenge _so very much_.  
  
"We could leave them hints," he says, reaching up to brush a stray curl behind her ear. "Give them the opportunity to work it out. They won't, of course."

 

Her smile grows as his eyes light up, the idea catching his fancy as she could all but _see_ him turn it around in his mind. She leans, almost unconsciously, into the light touch of his fingertips as he brushes the curl behind her ear, and she finishes running the soapy washcloth over his body.  
  
"No, they won't, but _I'd_ enjoy them," she agrees. "I'll need a weapon, of course. But not a firearm. I refuse to play your Moran quite _that_ closely."

 

"Something cleaner than a dagger, though," he agrees. "Something with its own trademark."  
  
He considers the rumor he once heard of an assassin who killed with a slim ice pick that was worn around the belt like a sword. It was only a rumor. Something more or less to keep other assassins from acting up.

 

"Mm..." She rolls the hum around in her throat, in her mouth, as she considers his words. A trademark...  
  
She smiles then, slow and sharp, as she steps out of the water again, pushing open the shower stall's door, letting out the moist steam that has been cocooning them.  
  
The idea of a puzzle, a game, would always move them, after all, no matter how much they lingered and tried to stretch out their moments of sentiment.  
  
"I have just the trademark," she says. "And where to get it, if you can stand another twenty minute detour in St. Petersburg."

 

He would welcome another detour. Of course he would. He would never admit to welcoming it, of course. But Moscow was already too close, the end of their holiday already too near.  
  
"I can manage that," he says. "I'll acquire us new tickets. First class."  
  
They deserved it after all they'd been through in the meantime.

 

She does not point out that first class bores him, that the lack of irritants like children kicking seats and screaming infants does not make up for the lack of stimulation, the density of people in first class meant that their secrets and their comings and goings would be easily read long before they reached cruise.  
  
She does not say so, because their sentiment is in the space between the words, in the fact that he knows _she_ likes the luxury, that this time there are likely to be no night terrors to wake her screaming from sleep in first class. Though, she supposes, they'd found a satisfactory cure for his boredom and a distraction from her demons then too.  
  
A warm, throaty chuckle in response. "Good. We can continue planning our disguises in the air," she answers. She does not tell him what her plan is for the weapon, of course. Not until he asked, or until they were on the plane, whichever came first.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for finishing up another journey with us! As our readers may have noticed, we are rapidly careening towards the end of _Death Takes A Holiday_ , and the next installment (tentatively titled _Death Takes A Holiday: The End of All Things_ ) will in fact be the very last installment of DTaH. So thank you for staying on this 'little' adventure with us week after week, month after month, and year after year. It has been an absolute pleasure to know all of you, and we hope that you'll enjoy the last installment.
> 
> A small change to our schedule. Instead of taking our usual 2 week hiatus before posting the next installment, the next installment will start posting the weekend of April 16th, due to Lyra needing to spend the next few weeks working on things for Emerald City Comicon. Until then, enjoy!


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